"Pat Cadigan - The Final Remake Of Little Latin Larry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cadigan Pat)

descendant from her father, who had done the original feature -- Little
Latin Larry and His Loopy Louies, Luscious Latinaires, and Lascivious
Latinettes -- and three remakes before going on to find and recover The
Return of Little Latin Larry. Carola told me he had done three remakes
after that original before retiring and turning things over to her. She'd
done the next three remakes and hadn't been completely happy with any of
them, though she told me she thought they were improving and she had high
hopes for this one.
I suppose I should have realized something was funny when Carola told me
she made her living providing memory bits for interpolation filler. But
the genealogy chart she showed me was highly detailed and extensive. Some
families are like that -- one of the ancestors had a lineage obsession
that gets passed down to subsequent generations like any other heirloom.
Or memory, I guess.
But most people who claim full documentation from before the Collapse and
Rebuilding I've generally dismissed, at least privately, as either liars
or as the very gullible offspring of liars. And there are those who aren't
actually that gullible but who like to believe that they have
documentation that exists for no one else, as if the force of their
lineage could defeat the effects of something as great as the breakdown of
civilization itself. I don't argue with people who claim to remember past
incarnations firsthand, either. If it helps them cope and keeps them from
trying to make the world unpleasant, I say on with delusion and who says
reality has to be so tight-fitting anyway?
Perhaps I'm a little too lenient that way. But, look, now -- whatever's in
the blood speaks for itself, and if it isn't there, it may well be that it
just wasn't passed on, a vagary of biology or of timing. There was a
famous case just half a dozen years ago of Tino Marlin, who could document
descent from Birgit Crow, who uncovered the ruins of the historical Lost
City of Soho, proving once and for all not only that Soho had been real
but also that the two islands of Manhattan had once been one whole island.
But Tino didn't have any memory bits; they were all in the blood of a
rather disreputable urban nomad who went only by the single name Vyuni,
and who somehow knew she was related to Crow. Family legend, perhaps, but
in this case, a legend that turned out to be true. Much to Tino Marlin's
dismay, as Vyuni and her tribe tried to sponge enormously off the Marlins
and harassed them in the most miserable ways when Tino refused them. Worse
for Tino, in his own words, though, is having to live with the knowledge
that while he may own every valuable heirloom and relic that his ancestor
kept from the excavation and rediscovery, only Vyuni can provide the raw
material for a feature about Crow and the Lost City. Nature can be so
cruel.
It didn't seem that Nature had been at all cruel to Carola, not in her
veins, and certainly not in any other area. Carola Ignazio was a beautiful
woman, retaining so much of her ancestor's Latin beauty -- the dark, shiny
hair, the nearly black eyes, the golden complexion. She was a little
plump, but that only made you want to touch her, cuddle her. I know I did,
and I don't go that way. For her, I might have been persuaded, though.
Larry's Loopy Louies were represented by a black Asian kid named Philo
Harp. He was barely legal at thirteen, and everyone was vague as to how