"Ann Maxwell - Change" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxwell Ann)

As Mark set out the dishes, an odd shyness came over Selena. She hadn't eaten with anyone for longer
than she cared to remember.

"If you're worried about drugs," said Mark casually, I'll trade food with you."

Selena shook her head and sat down across from him. The table was so small she could feel the warmth
of his legs through her thin robe, smell the clean scent of his skin, count the bronze hairs which rippled
and shone with each movement of his arm. An old, amorphous desire rose in her—to be close, to touch,
a little girl's longing honed by a woman's sensuality.

"Selena? What is it?"

She looked at his face, so near, seeming to care, and sudden anger pumped through her. "What is it? I'm
a pariah, a paran, a freak. I haven't eaten with or been touched by anyone since I was ten. And there you
sit, eating with me, touching me—"

"Are you afraid?"
"Damn you! No! But even freaks," she said harshly, "have the same feelings as normals."

Mark calmly put down his fork. "If by freaks you mean paranormals, you're partly right. Parans do have
the same needs as normals, with this difference: parans need more intensely. Their response to every type
of stimulus is exaggerated. Lower pain threshold, pleasure threshold, hunger, thirst, sexuality, every
'normal' feeling is magnified. In addition, the paran must cope with a constant, involuntary tide of
information and emotion from the people around him. The sensory load on the brain is staggering. Some
cannot take it and retreat into insanity. The parans who survive mentally intact invariably have superior
intelligence. Intelligence, after all, is the ability to assimilate data from which new data can be made. This
intelligence, however, does not guarantee emotional tranquility. It merely guarantees that when a paran
acts impulsively—which is often—he knows very well the varieties of fool he is.

"Parans are all too human, Selena. Now eat your breakfast."

Selena looked at him wonderingly. "You're not afraid of me. I. don't even disgust you."

Mark's low laugh seemed to tingle across her arms. "You don't seem to realize how attractive you are,
Selena." He looked at her curiously. "Surely other men have noticed."

Selena's mouth became a hard line. "The first thing my parents taught me was that human contact outside
the family would lead to betrayal and death."

"And after your parents died?"

She picked up her fork. "I survived."

Selena pressed against the hard plastic chair, stretching the muscles of her back. Molls'
cross-examination of the Earther had proved the obvious: fanaticism and insanity coexisted in the Good
Earth sect. The next witness, a doctor, was describing exactly which qualities set Branlows apart from
normal. She half-listened to the present, half-remembered the past, drifting on currents of fact and
emotion.