"Michael Swanwick - Vacumn Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

cut tomorrow.” He moved toward the door.
“Wait a minute!” Rebel cried. The doctor stopped,
turned to look at her. Dead eyes surrounded by paint,
under a brush of red hair. “Have I given permission for
this operation?”
Again he turned that infuriatingly reassuring smile on
her. “Oh, I don’t think that’s important,” he said, “do
you?”
 Before she could answer, he was gone.
As the nurse adjusted the adhesion disks on Rebel’s
brow and behind her ears, she briefly leaned into Rebel’s
view. It was a nun, a heavy woman with two chins and eyes
that burned with visions of God. Earlier, when Rebel was
still groggy and half-aware, she had introduced herself as
Sister Mary Radha. Now Rebel could see that the nun had
been tinkering with her own wetware—her mystic
functions were cranked up so high she could barely
function.
Rebel looked away, to hide her thoughts. “Please turn
on,” she murmured. The video flat by the foot of her cot
came up, open to the encyclopedia entry for medical codes.
Hastily, she switched it over to something innocuous.
Simple-structure atmospheric methane ecologies. She
pretended to be absorbed in the text.
Then, as the nurse was leaving, Rebel casually said,
“Sister? The flat’s at a bad angle for me. Could you tilt it
forward a little?” The nun complied. “Yeah, like that. No, a
bit … perfect.” Rebel smiled warmly, and for a moment
Sister Mary Radha basked in this manifestation of
universal love. Then she floated out.
“Fucking god-head,” Rebel muttered. Then, to the flat,
“Thank you.”
It turned itself off.
The flat’s surface was smooth and polished. Turned off,
it darkly reflected the foot of Rebel’s cot and the medical
code chart hanging there.
Rebel quickly decoded the reversed symbols. There were
two simplified persona wheels, one marked Original, and
the other Current. They looked nothing at all like each
other. Another symbol for wetsurgical prep, and three
more that, boiled down, meant she had no special medical
needs. And a single line of print below that, where her
name should have been. Rebel read it through twice, letter
by letter, to make sure there was no mistake:
 Property of Deutsche Nakasone GmbH
Anger rose up in Rebel like a savage white animal. She
clenched her teeth and drew back her lips and did not try
to fight it. She wanted this anger. It was her ally, her only
friend. It raged through her paralyzed body, a hot storm of
fangs and claws and violence.