"Walter Jon Williams - Hardwired" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

"Do svidaniya, my sister," says Michael, sounding annoyed, and snaps off. Sarah looks into
the humming receiver and frowns.
The door opens behind her and she spins and goes into her stance, balanced to jump forward
or back. Daud walks carelessly in the door. Behind him, carrying a six-pack of beer, comes his
manager, Jackstraw, a small young man with unquiet eyes.
Daud looks up at her, speaks through the cigarette held in his lips. "You expecting
someone else?" he asks.
She relaxes. "No," she says. "Just nerves. It's been a nervous day."
Daud's eyes move restlessly over the small apartment. He has altered the irises from brown
to a pale blue, just as he'd altered the color of his hair, eyebrows, and lashes to a white blond.
He is tanned, and his hair is shoulder-length and shaggy. He wears tooled leather sandals, and a
tight white pair of slacks under a dark net shirt. He is taking hormone suppressants, and though
he is twenty he looks fifteen and is beardless.
Sarah moves over to him and kisses him hello. "I'm working tonight," he says. "He wants to
have dinner. I can't stay long."
"Is it someone you know?" she asks.
"Yes." He gives a shadowy grin, meant to be reassuring. His blue eyes flicker. "I've been
with him before."
"Not a thatch?"
He shrugs out of her embrace and goes to sit on the sofa. "No," he mumbles. "An old guy.
Lonely, I guess. Easy to please. Wants to talk more than anything." He sees the plastic pack of
endorphins and picks it up, searching through it. Sarah sees two more vials vanish between his
fingers.
"Daud," she says, her voice a warning. "That's our food and rent-I've got to get it on the
street."
"Just one," Daud says. He drops the other back in the bag, holds up one to let her see it.


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Cigarette ash drifts to the floor.
"You've already had your share," Sarah says.
His pale eyes flicker in his dark face. "Okay," he says. But he doesn't put the vial down.
His need is too strong. She looks down and shakes her head. "One," she agrees. "Okay." He
pockets it, then picks up the loaded injector and dials a dosage-a high dosage, she knows. She
resists the urge to check the injector, knowing that someday if he goes on this way he'll put
himself in a coma, but knowing how much he'd resent her concern. Sarah watches as the endorphin
hits his head, as he lies back and sighs, his twitchy nervousness gone.
She takes the injector and frees the vial, then puts it in the plastic bag. There is a
half smile on Daud's face as he looks up at her. "Thanks, Sarah," he says.
"I love you," she says.
He closes his eyes and strops his back on the sofa like a cat. His throat makes strange
whimpering noises. She takes the bag and walks into her room and throws the bag on her bed. A wave
of sadness whispers through her veins like a drug of melancholy. Daud will die before long, and
she can't stop it.
Once it had been she who stood between him and life; now it is the endorphins that keep
him insulated from the things that want to touch him. Their father had been crazy and violent, and
half her scars were Daud's by right; she had suffered them on his behalf, shielding him with her
body. The madman's beatings had taught her to fight back, had made her hard and quick, but she