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

erupted in America, again. Titan and Europa were at war in a dispute of
spatial territory...
And, in cubby 101, Chester Carnegie was slowly going APE.
Towards midnight the screen above the hatch bleeped and I accepted the
call. A panda-faced girl peered out. "Chester Carnegie?" she asked. "The
guy who's going APE?"
"Who the hell are you?" I yelled.
"Your therapist," she smiled. "Hincty Little-O'fay."
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" On the fur of her forehead I made out
her serial number, and as she turned her big panda head I saw the
microphone implant at the back of her neck. She was a call-girl.
"No joke, Chester. You want to find out why you're going APE?"
"You know?" I exclaimed.
"Meet me in the Carotid Fix slouchbar in fifteen minutes," she said. "I'll
be a dolphin."
I was there in ten.
The Carotid Fix slouch serviced the spaceport quarter, a mixed bar with
one wall looking out across the system. Aliens, humans and boosted-animals
drank together or got their fixes alone and jugularwise. A bigship Captain
sat cross-legged on the floor, discussing Einstein-Fernandez physics with
a tiger and a slow loris. Mood music bubbled, Martian tablas and Lyran
waterpipes. I found an elevated booth and five minutes later Hincty
Little-O'fay strode in.
She was the most beautiful dolphin I'd ever seen.
Her body was human-female and well-proportioned, but from the neck up she
was pure bottle-nose. She slipped into the seat across from me. "I'll
change if you prefer," she said. "Some human customers like fauna,
though."
She touched the back of her head and the dolphin disappeared. She was a
cute white kid, maybe twenty. "Of course, I can be anything you want.
Subdermal laser fibre-optic capillaries. You like?"
"Just what the hell kind of therapist are you?" I asked.
She tossed her head. "I was hired by the Canterbury Line when Dr Lassiter
informed them you were going APE-"
"The Canterbury Line? I don't see...?" I was confused, to say the least.
Why would my old employees hire a call-girl to act as my therapist? "You
said you knew why I'm going APE...?"
The cyborg barman hovered over to us and Hincty Little-O'fay ordered a
cyberpunch - a Gibson with helium. The goldfish bowl before her bubbled
from the bottom up. She sucked through a straw, nodding and making big
eyes to halt my impatience.
"Yeah," she squeaked, smiling at me. "You were once an Engineman for the
Canterbury Line, right? Well, a few months ago they discovered that a
number of their Enginemen were going APE. They found out why, and started
drafting in boosted-animals to do the work instead."
"So why am I...?"
She pulled a face. "Well... hate to be the one to tell you this, Chester -
but the Line kept a lot from you Enginemen. Like when you put yourself in
those thingy-tanks to flux-"
"Sensory-deprivation-"