"Jay Lake - Eye Teeth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

Eye Teeth by Jay Lake

****

Turning on to S.E. Belmont Street, I ran into Shark.

Literally.

He was a Ukrainian kid originally, but that was even before I met him. After a
few too many swims in the retro vat, some wicked surgery and a whole lot of
transposons Mother Nature never intended, he was ... well ... something else.

Shark wasn’t much over one meter forty but he had to mass two hundred
kilos. His head was bullet-shaped and it melted into his shoulders without benefit of
neck or throat. I’d heard he had carbon fiber mesh woven into his muscles for
scaffolding—true or not, he had arms bigger around than my fat head. Legs to
match.

The weirdest thing, what got him on virteo every now and then on some
extreme mod program, was his skin. Shark was armored head to toe with a mosaic
of enamel fragments growing straight out of his epidermis. He was covered in human
teeth, basically, on every part of his body except his jaws. There he had pointy
freaking shark teeth, about four rows’ worth.

And I do mean everywhere on that tooth skin thing, if you know what I mean.

The only thing human besides his general shape was his eyes. They were a
pale, watery blue, like you expect on a librarian or a tax accountant. Which was
weird because even a natural guy like me pops custom Eyes every chance I get—I
was wearing gray market StarEyes that day, supposed to help pick up chicks and
charm the world—while Shark’s peepers were original equipment.

Of course, he got groupies, which was more than anyone else I knew. They
didn’t last long, but they partied hearty until E.R. time.

Still and all, I wouldn’t want to get up every morning and scour my happy ass
from stem to stern with a toothbrush. The guy must buy Colgate by the case lot. I
could only imagine what his hemorrhoids were like.

He was also perfectly capable of ripping my arms off by way of friendly
greeting. Shark demonstrated this character trait by peeling back the hood of my
Skoda Hybrid.

I hit the emergency flashers and fumbled open the gull wing door. “Hey, cut
that shit out!”
 Shark sort of patted the hood back down. The sheet metal looked like tinfoil
after the baked potato has gone to its reward. “I lookin’k for ch’ou.”

He didn’t talk so good either. But that had been true years ago too, back when
he still had lips.