"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Questing Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

"You made a second map of Olive?" Reed's voice rasps. His throat has tightened
against the words.

Rodriguez shakes his head. "She wouldn't let us touch her again."

Reed doesn't move. He can feel Olive's presence all around him. The warmth
envelops him like a hug. Sometimes things like this happen because of
environment. You two went everywhere together. Or shared the same experiment.

"Could this be happening to me because of the map?" Reed asks. He does not look
at Rodriguez, focusing instead on the small hothouse rose blooming on the third
shelf to his left.

"No." Rodriguez leans forward into Reed's line of vision. Rodriguez places his
face so that his piercing gaze meets Reed's. "We have done this technique a
hundred times since and have used it as a diagnostic tool. No one else has had
this problem."

Reed cannot look into that tiny bit of cielo. He turns away. "You sound awfully
certain for a man who is experimenting."

"You used to like my certainty," Rodriguez says.

The words make Reed start. Another thing lost? He cannot tell.

Rodriguez stands. He pats Reed's shoulder with a familiarity that strangers
should not have. "Come to Cedar Sinai tomorrow at nine A.M. and report to
Neurology. We will have your new map in no time."

"Tomorrow," Reed whispers. The promise hangs in the air long after Rodriguez has
left. The heat has become oppressive as if, in its weight, lingers Olive's
disapproval.

They begin with old-fashioned technologies, X-rays, an MRI, a PET and an AAL.
Then they take him into a room he believes he has never seen before. This test
has no acronym. He is placed on a divan, one of three in a room the size of his
master bathroom. A technician places a device shaped like a hairdryer in a 1950s
beauty salon over his head. His neck is held in place by a soft cushion. He is
encouraged to close his eyes, but he is asked not to sleep.

He cannot sleep anyway. The room is air-conditioner cold, the kind of dry chill
that seeps into his bones and brings goosebumps to his skin. Two people monitor
him from the booth above--both women. He has not seen Rodriguez all morning.
All night he dreamed of Olive as she had been when he met her, her black hair
held in rolls by ornate combs, her lipstick thick and red on her narrow mouth,
her eyes snapping with a vitality that drew him like a thirsty man to water. At
first he was happy, because he had found another untapped memory. They made love
in a private rail car as it bumped and thudded along a steel track, their moans
lost in the clatter. Then everything went dark, and he heard her voice, faint