[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.”“That’s wrong, somehow—”“I haven’t forgotten you.”“You’re weak,” he said, his fingers forgetting themselves long enough to brush her face.She moved his hand to the side of her breast.His fingers felt only the ripple of ribs.“I’m getting stronger.A lot stronger.”* * *Kevin saw Nordstrom that afternoon.“Well, the young lion,” the man greeted him.Nordstrom had shriveled, everything but his head had shrunk.He looked like the fraudulent Wizard of Oz—a great, inflated bladder with no body.“Apparently the tables have turned,” he admitted.“I’m in the cage and you’re the conquering hero.”“Hardly a cage.” Kevin looked around the room.“They took… my things.”“They should have.”“You’ve come to gloat? Or cure me, is that it? Dr.Schweitzer, I presume, come to minister to the poor ignorant savage—”“Poor, no.Ignorant, hardly.Savage, yes.Nordstrom—”“Doctor Nordstrom to you, Blake.”“Nordstrom, what did you want from Jane?”“Past tense.My, we are overconfident.When the government doesn’t need you anymore, they’ll put you out to pasture, too.”“I’d have thought they’d have shipped you to a head joint in Virginia by now,” Kevin conceded.“Can’t.Know too much.You do, too, Blake.Wait’ll you see how they discredit you.”“You discredited yourself.What did you want from Jane?”“Her… compliance.”“Jane isn’t a terribly compliant person,” Kevin said.“No, but you did all right.” Nordstrom’s eyes glittered as he shrank back against his bed’s metal headboard.“I’m not going to hit you, Nordstrom.I’d like to, but I’m not going to.If you made me do it, you’d have won.I won’t hit you and Jane won’t—wouldn’t—comply, isn’t that right?”“Yes, you’re a fucking coward and she’s a, a—free spirit.” Nordstrom started laughing, a smug giggle that grated like chalk on a blackboard.Kevin waited for him to stop before speaking again.“She made you eat shit.She made you hit rock bottom in yourself and then glory in it.”Nordstrom was silent, but near the nosepiece, his glasses fogged over with the fury of his seething breaths.Kevin automatically went to take his pulse, wary of hyperventilation.The vast complex, whatever it had been originally, was habitually kept meat-locker cold, and the earth was still wrapped in the dead of winter outside this artificial miniworld.Nordstrom jerked his wrist away.“Fast.I was hyperactive as a child.And I may be a… teensy… agitated now.So keep your filthy hands off me!”Kevin watched the psychiatrist nurse his wrist, as if Kevin’s impersonal touch had bruised it.“Did you keep your hands off her, Nordstrom? Or couldn’t you resist, another almost-dead body for you to fondle, as you did Julie’s?” Kevin prowled around the bed, aiming insight like weapons, being a bad psychiatrist.“How long have you been screwing your patients, Nordstrom? Your female patients? Or is that all? You like women bone-thin, boyish almost.Is that what it is—not a fixation with death but an obsession with sex turned inside out? Maybe you don’t like women at all, in any shape or form.Maybe you like men and can’t face it—”“What about your stability?” Nordstrom struck back.“You picked Julie and enjoyed it enough to see her through the long, slow fade—”“Dr.Cross’s theories won’t wash.Julie seemed normal when I met her.Besides, anorexia stems from an individual’s desire for ultimate control, particularly for women—who are so often overcontrolled by environment and their culture.And Jane never was anorexic; she gains weight like a wrestler, given half a chance.You had to starve her to keep her at your needed perception of her.You’re a mean bastard, Nordstrom; I bet your female patients would have a few tales to tell—”Nordstrom brooded icily, pushing his chin down on his chest.Kevin walked to the wall, where a print of Van Gogh’s sunflowers hung too high and crooked.Someone had recently paid almost forty million dollars for the original that Van Gogh had never been able to sell.Kevin straightened the clone [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]