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

Nicole has a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and wears a jacket of cracked brown leather. She has dark blond hair that reaches down her back in tawny strands, and long deep gray eyes that look up at Sarah without a flicker.
Cunningham stands behind her with his two assistants. One is huge, a muscleman with no neck. The other is small, blond, and has even less to say than Cunningham. Sarah thinks the smaller is the more dangerous of the two.
"You can't hesitate for a second, Sarah," Cunningham says. "Not even the fragment of a second. Princess will know it and know there's something wrong. Nicole is here for that. You are to practice with her."
Sarah looks at Nicole for a moment of surprise and then barks a laugh. Anger bubbles in her, whitely, coolly, like flares on the night horizon. "I suppose you plan to watch, Cunningham," she says.
He nods. "Yes," he says. "I and Firebud. You seemed uncertain at first about making love to a woman." Nicole draws slowly on her cigarette and says nothing.
"Make a vid record, perhaps?" Sarah asks. "Give me post-game critique?" She curls her lip. "Is that your particular pleasure, Cunningham?" she demands. "Does watching this kind of vid keep your demons away?"
"We'll destroy the vids together, if you like...afterward," Cunningham says. His no-neck assistant grins. The other watches her, expressionless as his chief.
Sarah has been two months in training, has had her body altered and surgical work done, and all along she has been their willing dirtgirl. But however many candidates had been in Cunningham's files, she is sure she's the only hope now, the only charge Cunningham will have shaped by the time Princess next comes down from orbit, and she knows now she has power of her own. They will have to go with her or the project will fail, and it is time they knew it.
She shakes her head slowly. "I don't think so, Cunningham," she says. "I'll be ready on the night, but I'm not now and I'm not going to be. Not for you, not for your cameras."
Cunningham does not reply. He seems to squint a little, as if suddenly the light is stronger. Nicole watches Sarah with smoky eyes, then shakes her long hair and speaks. "Just dance with me, then." Her words come a little too abruptly, as if impelled by some form of desperation, and Sarah wonders what she has been promised, how she has been made vulnerable to them. When she speaks, her voice gives her away; it is so much younger than her pose. "Just dance a little," she says. "It'll be all right."
Sarah turns her gaze from Cunningham to Nicole and back, then nods. "Will a few dances satisfy you, Cunningham?" she asks. "Or do we end the program where we stand?"
His jaw muscles tighten, and for a moment Sarah thinks the business is done, that it's over. Then he nods, still facing her. "Yes," he says. "If it has to be that way."
"That's how it has to be," she says. There is a moment of silence, then Cunningham nods again, as if to himself, and turns away. Nicole gives a nervous smile, wanting to please, not knowing who is her ticket to whatever it is she needs. Cunningham walks to the sound deck and presses a switch. Music buffets the walls. He turns back and folds his arms, waiting.
Nicole closes her eyes and shrugs out of her jacket. Either they have gone out of their way to find a woman of Princess's build or they have been lucky. Sarah watches as Nicole sways her body to the music, the plastic girl, waiting blindly to take an impression.
She steps forward and takes the girl's hands in her own.

DELTA THREE EMERGENCY ATTEMPTED SUICIDE AUJOUAD'OUI EMERGENCY

Deep in her zone, Sarah shakes her head to clear the sweat from her eyes and feels the hardfire biting her veins. Princess has been her partner all night. She leaps and spins, and Princess watches with gleaming eyes, admiring. She feels like the crane on her back, arms stretching out to fly on pinions of purest silver. Sarah changes zones and Princess follows, letting her give a name to their motion, their liquid pattern. She is bringing Princess in closer until, like a wave, she can fall upon her from her crest of foaming white.
There is an intrusion into the zone, an attempted alteration in the pattern. Sarah whirls, an elbow digging deep into ribs, the zoneboy doubling with the impact. She slices at his neck with a sword hand and the boy flies from the zone whimpering. Princess is watching, rapt with glowing admiration. Sarah steps to her and catches her about the waist, and they spin like skaters on the edge of sharpened blades.
"Am I the danger that you want?" she asks. The blue eyes give an answer. I know you, old man, Sarah thinks in triumph, and bends her head to devour the violet lips, feasting like a raptor on her prey. The eyes of Princess widen, held in Sarah's gaze. Her lips taste of salt, and blood.

MODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERN
You Can't Claim You're a CYBORG Till You Have a
MODERNBODY SEXUAL IMPLANT
Undetectable...
Gives You the Power to Last All Night...
Orgasm Chips Optional...
Your Partner Will Thank You for It!
RNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODY

Cunningham's car hisses through the night on speed-blurred wheels. Holograms slide past the windows in neon array. Sarah watches the back of the driver's neck as it swells from its collar. "It'll be best if you go alone to the club," Cunningham says. "Princess may send some of her people ahead, and you don't want to be seen with anyone."
Sarah nods. He's given these instructions before and she can recite them word for word, even do a fair imitation of the whispery monotone. She nods to show she's listening. Earlier this afternoon she'd collected the second payment of chloramphenildorphin, and her mind is occupied chiefly with ways of putting it on the street.
"Sarah," he says, and reaches into a pocket. "I want you to have this. Just in case." His hand comes up with a small aerosol bottle.
"Yes?" she asks. She sprays it on the back of her hand, touches it, sniffs.
"Silicon lubricant," he says. "The scent is right, and should last for hours. Use it in the washroom if you find that you aren't really...attracted to her. "
Sarah caps the bottle and holds it out to him. "I don't plan for it to go that far," she says.
He shakes his head. "Just in case," he says. "We don't know what happens when you go behind her walls."
She holds it out, expectant, then when he doesn't respond, she shrugs and puts it in her belt pouch. She rests her reshaped jaw on her hand and stares out the window, the hologram adverts reflecting in her dark eyes, until the car slides to a stop at the door of her apartment.
She reaches for the latch and opens it, steps out. The heat of the outside covers her like a smothering blanket, and she can feel the sweat springing up on her forehead. Cunningham sits huddled in his seat, somehow smaller than he had been. Up until now, until the firing of his shaped charge, he'd been in control-but now he's committed her to action and all he is able to do is watch the result and hope he calculated the ballistics correctly. His jaw muscles twitch in a tight smile and he raises a hand.
"Thanks," she says, knowing he's wished her luck without actually risking a curse by saying it, and she turns away and breathes out and feels a lightness in her body and heart, as if the gravity were somehow lessened. All she has left is the job. No more pleasing Cunningham, no more rules or training, no more listening to Firebud criticizing the very way she walked, the way she held her head. All that is behind.
The apartment is splashed with video color and she knows Daud is home. He's cleared the coffee table from the center of the room and is doing his exercises, the weights in his hands, the burning holograms outlining his naked body, his hairless genitals. She kisses his cheek.
"Dinner?" she asks.
"I'm going with Jackstraw. He wants me to meet someone."
"Someone new?"
"Yes. It's a lot of money." He drops the weights and lowers himself to the floor, begins strapping another set of weights to his ankles. She stands over him with a frown.
"How much?" she asks.
He gives her a quick glance, green laserfire winking from his eye whites, then he looks down. His voice is directed to the floor. "Eight thousand," he says.
"That's a lot," she says.
He nods and stretches his back on the ground, raising his legs against the strain of the weights. He points his feet and she can see the muscles taut on the tops of his thighs. She slips out of her shoes and flexes her toes in the carpet.