"Kathleen Ann Goonan - The Bride of Elvis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

faith. Until today.
She'd never trusted the Techs, with all their fancy gear and snotty ways. She once even requested a few pit bulls to
stand guard. That point in her favor was on the record. A pretty slim defense, now that the worst had happened. "You
have no idea," she had told the Committee, her days full of sobbing women flinging themselves against the velvet
rope, smearing lipstick on the pyramid. But they weren't the real problem. Earth was such an odd place, full of criminals
and just pure weirdness, you never knew what might happen, and now the worst, the absolute worst had happened.
There were plenty of people who'd like to get hold of Elvis. But without Techs, he wouldn't last long.
She slid into the booth still trying to figure things out. She stared out the window while the black-haired man
ordered coffee and hash browns and ham and biscuits and gravy and cheese omelets and grits for both of them just as
if he knew, although she could see at a glance that he couldn't and that he was just a normal old human. But a good
one, she saw that too. She wouldn't have even gotten into his truck if she hadn't been able to see that, but she didn't
even have to think about those sorts of things because humans were really such simple beings. She kind of liked them,
they made things so homey. They knew how to live -- except that they scarcely lived longer than an insect. Hardly a
tragedy, as far as she was concerned.
Still, sometimes she got tired of being a Bride and wanted to just be a human, instead of taking care of Elvis and
longing for her kiddies. She'd had two before she was eleven, the process triggered by the sweat on the scarf she'd
grabbed at her first concert.
Elvis had thrown it right at her. God, how lucky she'd been! Chosen! If the ship ever did come back, she was first in
line for Elvis. She'd been activated at just the right age; she was one of the few who could actually mate with Elvis and
conceive another King.
But it wasn't all fun. She'd had to leave those cute kiddies with her mother in order to be a Bride. That was hard.
Being a Bride wasn't all it was cut out to be -- checking all those meters and charts every day, letting them know if
something was just a hair off so's the Techs could rush over and make a big deal out of it and blame it on the Bride in
charge. Techs didn't think much of Brides, that was for sure. And now He was gone, and it was all her fault!
Or if it wasn't, best to hide out till they figured out whose fault it really was. She shivered to think how mean the
other Brides would be when they found the King gone. It was pretty much like murder, or maybe killing somebody with
a runaway car, because they wouldn't live much longer without him. Maybe not even a full human lifespan, puny as
that was. Shit.
The man was watching her. He smiled. "You know, I'm not making fun of you or anything, but you sure look silly
with all that stuff running down your face. Whenever we cried, Ma used to make us look in the mirror and see how
funny we looked. 'See that monkey?' she'd say, and by God if that wouldn't make you laugh out loud to see your own
red little face all screwed up--"
Shut up, she felt like saying, What do you know? but instead slid out of the seat.
"Wait," he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"
She let the door of the ladies' room whoosh shut behind her and leaned with straight elbows on the white, scummy
sink.
He was right. She did look funny. Like a clown that had been caught out in the rain. Green stuff dribbled from the
corner of one eye down onto her cheek, and there was a big black smear across her nose. And as for her mouth...
She leaned over and splashed her face with water. It took soap to get it all off, and then her face felt stiff and dry
without her Rose-Soft Moisturizer, and she didn't even have her emergency touch-up kit because she didn't have her
purse with her. Her purse held not only her makeup but her bracelet, the bracelet that shielded them from the human
pheromones which the males gave off when they had sex, pheromones powerful enough to trigger conception. The
conception of mutants, that is. "Never go out without your bracelet," she could almost hear her mother warning. She
never had. She'd never done anything like she'd done today.
She lifted her chin. The hell with them. She'd done her best. It wasn't her fault that He was gone, even though they'd
blame it on her. Who cared? They'd be looking for her, but they'd never find her. She'd bury herself in this
Kingforsaken country and she wouldn't go back, that's all. She just wouldn't. Not till she was good and ready. Maybe
never.
She went back out and the plate of steaming food was there.
She slid into the booth. The ham was good and salty, real country stuff: she wondered where they got it. The