"Dick, Philip K - Game-Players Of Titan v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"Do you want a ride home?" the voice asked, and then Freya realized that it was her new husband, Clem Gaines. "You are going home, aren't you?" Clem Gaines, large and overstuffed, with blue eyes, she thought, like broken glass that had been glued there, and glued slightly awry, strolled across the Game room toward her. It pleased him, obviously, to be married to her.

It won't be for long, Freya thought. Unless, she thought suddenly, we have luck.

She continued brushing her hair, paying no attention to him. For a woman one hundred and forty years old, she decided critically, I look all right. But I can't take responsibility for it . . . none of us can.

They were preserved, all of them, by the absence of something, rather than the presence; in each of them the Hynes Gland had been removed at maturity and so for them the aging process was now imperceptible.

"I like you, Freya," Clem said. "You're a refreshing person; you make it obvious you don't like me." He did not seem bothered; oafs like Clem Gaines never were. "Let's go somewhere, Freya, and find out right away if luckwise you and IЧ" He broke off, because a vug had come into the room.

Jean Blau, putting on her coat, groaned, "Look, it wants to be friendly. They always do." She backed away from it.

Her husband, Jack Blau,, looked about for the group's vug-stick. "I'll poke it a couple of times and it'll go away," he said.

"No," Freya protested. "It's not doing any harm."

"She's right," Silvanus Angst said; he was at the sideboard, preparing himself a last drink. "Just pour a little salt on it." He giggled.

The vug seemed to have singled out Clem Gaines. It likes you, Freya thought. Maybe you can go somewhere with it, instead of me.

But that was not fair to Clem, because none of them consorted with their former adversaries; it was just not done, despite the efforts by the Titanians to heal the old rift of wartime dislike. They were a silicon-based life form, rather than carbon-based; their cycle was slow, and involved meth-

ane rather than oxygen as the metabolic catalyst. And they were bisexual . . . which was a rather non-B system indeed.

"Poke it," Bill Calumine said to Jack Blau.

With the vug-stick, Jack prodded the jelly-like cytoplasm of the vug. "Go home," he told it sharply. He grinned at Bill Calumine. "Maybe we can have some fun with it. Let's try to draw it into conversation. Hey, vuggy. You like make talk-talk?"

At once, eagerly, the Titanian's thoughts came to them, addressed to all the humans in the condominium apartment. "Any pregnancies reported? If so, our medical facilities are available and we urge you toЧ"

"Listen, vuggy," Bill Calumine said, "if we have any luck we'll keep it to ourselves. It's bad luck to tell you; everybody knows that. How come you don't know that?"

"It knows it," Silvanus Angst said. "It just doesn't like to think about it."

"Well, it's time the vugs faced reality," Jack Blau said. "We don't like them and that's it. Come on," he said to his wife. "Let's go home." Impatiently, he waved Jean toward him.

The various members of the group filed out of the room and down the front steps of the building to their parked cars. Freya found herself left with the vug.

"There have been no pregnancies in our group," she told the vug, answering its question.

"Tragic," the vug thought back in response.

"But there will be," Freya said. "I know we'll have luck, soon."

"Why is your particular group so hostile to us?" the vug asked.

Freya said, "Why, we hold you responsible for our sterility; you know that." Especially our spinner Bill Calumine does, she thought.

"But it was your military weapon," the vug protested.