Wild Cards. Джордж Р. Р. Мартин

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СКАЧАТЬ her feet firmly planted, and her face set in a stern expression. It was a perfect imitation of Michelle’s usual “fight mode.” Michelle glared at her.

      Adesina smiled. “Yeah, that is so not working, Mom.” She turned back to Kimmie. “Antonia is our drummer.” She gestured at the girl with tentacles for hands. Antonia nodded at Kimmie. “And Marissa plays keyboards.

      “This is Sean, our other sax player.” Kimmie smiled and gave him a small wave. Colors began rippling across his skin until they ended in bright neon shades.

      Adesina leaned in close. “He likes you and he’s also totes embarrassed,” she whispered.

      “Am not,” Sean cried.

      “Are too,” Adesina retorted.

      “Oh, here’s Asti—” She pointed at the boy holding a guitar case. “He plays guitar, obvs. And he’s totes cute with that peach fuzz all over. Now don’t be embarrassed, dude. And those bubbles coming off his head? They smell like peaches. So yummy.” Her voice dropped and she leaned in to whisper in Kimmie’s ear, “And OMG, you should see his abs.”

      The kids shook Kimmie’s hand, chatting about the songs each band was going to play.

      “Michelle, what are we going to do about those protesters?” Robin asked. “They’re going to hassle the kids for the entire time we’re here.”

      “They’re obviously reptoid people.” That was Jan, Robin’s landlady. Jan was a conspiracy nut. Pure tinfoil hat stuff. Michelle wasn’t entirely sure why Jan had come along on the trip. But she was getting on Michelle’s very last nerve.

      “They’re not lizard people, Jan,” Michelle said with exasperation. She’d had about enough of the whole lizard people, gray aliens, Denver Airport, and MKUltra conspiracies to last a lifetime. Well, in all fairness, the MKUltra stuff was true.

      “Jan,” Michelle continued. She glanced over at the kids. They seemed to be enjoying meeting Kimmie and talking about music. It was a relief. She’d been afraid that everyone would treat her kids the way God’s Weenies did. “You do know that all this conspiracy stuff is just, well, bullshit?”

      “Ha!” Jan said with maniacal glee. Blue sparks glittered between her teeth and the veins in her temples pulsed. Despite Jan’s all black attire and dark sunglasses, she couldn’t hide that she was a joker. And it was clear she wasn’t really trying to hide it much anyway.

      “An alien virus created all the wild cards,” Jan continued. “And MKUltra is a real thing. It just follows that there are other secret shenanigans going on. And they’re reptoid, not lizard people.”

      “Sweet baby Jesus,” Michelle groaned. “That doesn’t follow at all.”

      “Well, you’re a part of the Committee and we all know they’re nothing more than lackeys for the New World Order. And they’re butt monkeys for the Gnomes of Zurich. Also, you’re a product of aliens messing with human DNA.”

      Arghhhhhh, Michelle thought. Just enough truth balled up with the crazy to make things sound real.

      “Give it up, Michelle,” Robin said. “You’ve lost that fight. Those suitcases should have been here already.”

      Michelle took a real look around the lobby of the Gunter.

      The Gunter was sponsoring the competition and had also discounted the rooms, which made them affordable for the students. Most of the kids in the Mob came from families without a lot of disposable income, and instruments and music lessons weren’t cheap. Michelle had paid out of her pocket for the band’s transportation to San Antonio with the promise from the band’s director, Sharon Oberhoffer, that no one was to know it was from her.

      Sharon was a joker, too. When her card had turned, she’d been a professional trumpet player, but now her lips were freakishly small and puckered tight like a rosebud. It had prevented her from playing trumpet professionally anymore. Because she couldn’t speak, she whistled or used ASL to communicate. But mostly she whistled. It was like trying to carry on a conversation with Harpo Marx.

      “Snazzy place,” Michelle said as she looked around the lobby. Sharon gave a low whistle in agreement.

      Adorning the lobby ceiling were intricate, bright white crisscrossing moldings. Enormous chandeliers hung from medallions centered in the squares created by the crisscrosses. The walls were painted Texas sky blue. The second floor had a balcony overlooking the lobby.

      “I’ll check us in,” Michelle said to Jan and Robin.

      She walked to the front desk and gave the clerk her best professional model smile. “Hello, there are five rooms under the name Pond.”

      “Yes, Mrs. Pond,” the clerk replied, returning Michelle’s smile. “Your rooms are ready.”

      “It’s Ms. Pond. Are the rooms together?”

      “Oh yes, we planned for that.” A few moments later the clerk slid the keycards across the desk. “You’re on the sixth floor. Elevators are just over there.” The clerk leaned forward and said, “But you should know, that floor is haunted.”

       The Secret Life of Rubberband

       by Max Gladstone

       Part 1

      THE BAGS WERE LATE, protesters howled outside, and Robin Ruttiger, guidance counselor of Xavier Desmond High, had lost a student.

      “You have so many,” observed his unhelpful friend Jan Chang, who nobody called Sparkplug where she could hear them, before she turned the page of her highlighted and ballpoint-pen-annotated National Enquirer. She wore black jeans and a black leather jacket and would have looked completely foreign to San Antonio, Texas, even without the pulsing blue veins that webbed her skin. “Surely you can miss just one.”

      Robin scanned the posh chaos of the Gunter lobby, which boiled with teachers, parents, and kids who wore the T-shirts of eight different high school jazz bands. He covered the mic of his phone, even though the hold music probably didn’t care about the noise. “Antonia was over by the ferns a second ago. You’re sure she didn’t come out this door?”

      Jan did glance up this time, over the rim of the thick black sunglasses she wore to protect other people’s eyes from hers. Robin raised a hand to block the electric glare. “That would require my having any clue what she looks like.”

      “Why did you even come, if not to help?”

      She rolled her eyes, then pressed her sunglasses back into place. “I’m here because my niece is competing against your students in a band meet or match or whatever they call these things; said niece, charmingly devout, is convinced that residing in a historically haunted hotel puts her СКАЧАТЬ