"Eric Brown - Pithecanthropus Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

Pithecanthropus Blues
a short story by Eric Brown

Foreword

"Pithecanthropus Blues" was one of those all too rare events in a writer's
life - the story that arrives out of the blue almost fully formed. In my
experience, most stories start as a small idea, and slowly grow over the
weeks and months. Then they reach critical mass and must be written down.
"Blues..." wasn't like that at all. It came to me in March 1988, and I
wrote it in two days, left it a week and went through it to tidy up any
lose ends. I've often wondered why its birth was so painless. Perhaps
because it's a light, and light-hearted, tale, with no involved character
studies, or because it's set in an already existing background (that of
the nada-continuum locale of a few of my other tales), or... but if I
could work it out scientifically, I'd have all my stories come out that
way...
It sold to Maureen Porter's short-lived magazine, The Gate, the following
year, but never appeared there. I had included it in the ms of my first
collection, The Time-Lapsed Man and other stories, and my editor at Pan
wanted "Pithecanthropus Blues" as an original in the collection, and I had
to withdraw it from the magazine. Fortunately, Maureen understood the
situation. The story finally appeared in the collection in 1990, and now,
ten years later, makes only its second appearance.

Pithecanthropus Blues

24th May, 2060.
Proxmire Industrial Solar Satellite.
It began as a tickle in the backbrain, just like the first time. The
cerebellum is a difficult place to scratch, and I was reduced to holding
my head in my hands and yelling at the top of my voice. The neighbours on
all five sides began complaining and I had to quit the cubby. I took the
radial slide out to the arcing crystal membrane of the dome, darkened now
in night-phase. I stepped onto the perimeter causeway and began walking.
The tickle was a constant chatter now - no longer just tactile but
audible. It was as if the two hemispheres of my head were conversing in
tongues, or rather in grunts. Then I became aware of a very real presence
in my head, of an identity taking over my brain. This was how it had
happened before. Soon, I knew, I'd find myself elsewhere...
I passed the hatch of a slouch bar in the deck, raised like the conning
tower of a submarine. Strobing lights and music throbbed out, along with
the sound of voices and laughter. I wanted to climb down there and talk to
people, to establish the reality of my identity through social contact.
But I knew that would be a mistake. The last time this had happened, two
nights ago, I had returned to my senses to find myself naked and chin deep
in an H20 effluent conduit on the flipside of this solar spinning top. The
last thing I wanted was to go under drunk.
I blacked out.
As before, I had the sensation of swimming in some neutral medium. I was