"Jody Lynn Nye - Medecine Show" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nye Jody Lynn)

various Corporation dependents. Under the circumstances, she couldn't risk taking another available
module from a dock for every assignment. Thanks to Verdadero, she had to worry that a strange lab
might be booby-trapped or damaged. Also, having her module per-manently assigned was useful in
avoiding delays in the case of emergency missions. Locum tenens work paid well, too, and had helped
the Taylors pay for part of the refit.
The one bed and the communications console took up most of the space in the smaller chamber.
Cleverly designed drawers fit underneath the bed. The closet, set into the narrow space between two of
the module's bearing beams, was large enough for her uniforms, clean suits, and sweat clothes. In the
three years that had passed, there had been neither time nor money to replenish Shona's wardrobe. Now
that the Sibyl was space-borne again, perhaps they would find opportunities to trade with weavers and
couturiers in various colonies. Lani, who settled with liquid grace on the bed beside her, had the slender
legginess of a tri-dee model, and looked good in whatever she put on, be it rags or high fashion. Shona,
with her shorter legs and more everyday hips, went for classic style and jewel-like colors. Still, she knew
material pleasures had limited value to her. She would rather go naked than be without her friends and
children, and felt lucky to be surrounded by them all the time. If Verdadero's assassins ever got a chance
to harm them—but no, she would fight and die to defend them from him.
Shona waited impatiently for the Sibyl to finish its jump. The promised hour crept by as slowly as the
night before a birthday party, and Alex fidgeted on her lap. She played hand games with him, and sang
little songs which he occasionally joined in with a tuneless crowing. Lani left her place for a while,
returning with a covered bowl filled with colorful beads, and a skein of thick thread. Silently she offered
the bowl to Shona.
The beads had come from an arts and crafts outlet in the Venturi shipyard mall. Shona and the others
had spent a long time walking around there. Window shopping was one of the few forms of cheap
entertainment they had. She and Chirwl had stood sadly outside the confectionery shop, looking in at a
display of Crunchynut bars, a candy from Earth that they both loved. They were priced right out of the
galaxy, since they had been imported all the way from Terra. Shona sighed, but there was still no money
to buy anything but essentials. Not even her nimble brain could work out how luxury candy could be
considered a staple.


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 Jody Lynn Nye - Medicine Show


In the craft store, a man with a torch and a minute pair of clippers was chopping tiny beads from
glowing rods of glass. Lani, growing desperate for something to do while the refit slogged interminably
on, found the demonstration going on in the little store, and excitedly hurried Shona over. In some of the
longest sentences Shona ever heard her say, Lani explained a fortune-telling game played by her people
on Karela in which colored beads were strung into a necklace. Though liquid credits were scarce at the
time, they scraped up enough to buy a quantity of the beads. Shona didn't dare let Lani pull an electronic
transfer of funds from her trust account at Mars-Bank. Luckily, the beads were inexpensive. The
material was glass waste from slagged scientific equipment and the port-holes of derelict ships. Trace
minerals dyed the rods into every color. Charmed by the girl's quiet, wide-eyed admiration, the
craftsman indulgently fumed some of the clear beads with platinum and gold coatings out of circuit-
board connections for her. She took her newfound purchases, and insisted that each of the Sibyl's
crewmen, and some of her new friends in the yardmaster's office, pick handfuls that she strung for them.
"Each color has its own meaning," Lani had explained to the crewmen, placing the chosen beads in a
small bowl. She picked them out one by one with her needle. "I don't look how they fall. That's fate."
The order in which they were added was supposed to tell a person's fortune for the rest of his or her life.
The number of beads was a multiple of the years in one's life span.