"Paul Di Filippo - Stink Lines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

took. Gary was in love.Over the next few months, as Gary ineluctably became
more intimate with thehistory of his chicken-headed humanoid namesake, he felt
himself growingcomfortable with his new unshakeable name.Barks's Gyro was
cool. Unfettered by marriage or convention, brilliant,carefree, indomitable in
the face of disaster, Gyro was perhaps the one citizenof classic Duckburg with
complete freedom. As role models went, you could domuch worse.In subsequent
years, as certain of the growing boy's own intellectualproclivities began to
manifest themselves, rendering him something of a happilyasocial loner, the
identification with Barks's creation became complete.So around about the time
Gary Greer-Lish got his third virtual Ph.D. (he wasnineteen), he answered more
readily and easily to Gyro Gearloose than to hislegal moniker. And a few years
later, when he opened his Happy Duck Research inDuckburg with a few hundred
million dollars deriving from his patents on aprocess that boosted the
efficiency of chlorophyll by two hundred percent, GyroGearloose was his legal
name.As for Ginger Barks, she had left Duckburg in their first year of high
school.Her parents had eventually crumbled under the pressure of being
permanently ondisplay, and had relocated to San Francisco. Cruelly, at just
that period whenGyro was becoming mature enough to deepen his relationship
with his one truelove, she flew out of his reach. During subsequent years,
despite Gyro'sconstant attempts at forging closer bonds, Ginger had remained
seeminglyuninterested in Gyro as anything more than an old childhood friend.
Nowadays, inher demanding job as reporter for the San Francisco Examiner,
Ginger seldom evenbothered to punch Gyro's address into her pocket-pal's
e-mail window.Gyro now planted a kiss on the glass front of Ginger's picture.
The glassfastidiously cleansed itself of his lip-prints, otherwise Ginger's
featureswould have been obscured by an overlay of such daily traces."If only I
could do something that would bring Ginger back to Duckburg," saidGyro
wistfully to the seemingly untenanted room. Not recognizing a command
orrequest, his desk remained silent. "Even if only for a little while.
Surelyshe'd soon see how much I care for her! But what could I do that would
bemarvelous and startling enough to attract her attention?"There came a
tugging at Gyro's pants leg. Looking down, he saw Li'l Bulb, hisHelper.Li'l
Bulb was Gyro's loyal personal assistant. Approximately fifteen incheshigh,
his form was simple: his head resembled a faceless Edison-era pointedlight
bulb sitting in a knurled chrome collar; below that, a flexiblestick-figure
armature, feet encased in bulbous shoes and hands begloved. Theseprimitive
looks, however, belied Li'l Bulb's astonishing features. Inside
hismock-filamentous head (opaque, with a trompe-l'oeil holo giving the
illusion oftungsten-occupied transparency), buckytube architecture granted him
a processingcapacity of many, many teraflops, the equivalent of several
oldtimesupercomputers. The titanium rods of his body were packed with
miniaturepower-sources and sophisticated sensors. The one thing Li'l Bulb
could not dowas speak. In this day and age where practically everything
talked, Gyropreferred silence in his assistant. However, Li'l Bulb's miming
was surprisinglyinformation-dense, and if necessary, he could always scribble
a quick note.Now Li'l Bulb's message was obvious. In response to Gyro's
plaint, he was wavinga rolled-up comic he plainly desired Gyro to read.Gyro
took the book, which was one of the many reprints of Carl Barks's
drakelyadventures to be found at various souvenir stands within Duckburg.
Overlyfamiliar with such fare, Gyro perused it briefly, then said, "What's the