"James Alan Gardner - Hunted" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

JAMES ALAN GARDNER - HUNTED
v1.0 [17-May-02] Scanned by ???, full proof by 4i Publications.

To Rob and Carolyn,
for getting me started in the Show,
then continuing to cheer from the stands

THANKS

Thanks to the usual crew: Linda Carson, Richard Curtis, and Jennifer Brehl. For continuing support, a big thank-you
too to Andy Heidel and Lou Aronica.
Since I'm writing this in 1999, I'd like to thank the developers of Microsoft Word for DOS 5.0, still the most useful
word processor for a fiction writer; and then I'd like to whack those same developers upside the head for not making
the software Y2K-compliant. Come December 31, I'll have to switch to some elephantine replacement that thinks it
knows what I want... when what I want is a decent thesaurus, intelligent use of style sheets, and a user interface that
doesn't keep making me take my hands off the keyboard. (Gardner's Third Law: When a particular computer operation
requires you to use the mouse, you will never get faster at that operation than your very first day of using the
software. In other words, hunt-and-peck beats point-and-click. Grumble, grumble, grumble ...)

Part 1
CROSSING THE LINE

1
GOING TO A PARTY

The first day of the flight, I was so happy to be heading home that I went to Willow's cafeteria for supper with the
crew ... and it seemed as if every woman on the star-ship wanted me to try the Angoddi mushrooms, or did I listen to
razzah poetry, or would I like a look at the engine-room service tunnels when the next shift was over?
I'd forgotten how bored folks get on long tours of duty. Bored with their jobs, bored with each other. One glimpse of
a new face, and people go into feeding frenzy. Or breeding frenzy. Maybe I should have been flattered, but all that
eager attention sort of got me terrified-I'd been stuck on a three-person moonbase for twenty whole years, so I felt way
out of my depth when a dozen women wanted to make conversation with me.
"You're so cute for an Explorer!"
"And you don't smell bad!"
"Do you have a funny voice? I bet you have a funny voice. Say something."
"Um," I said. "Um."
"Look, he's shy !" One of the women giggled. "Can they stick you in the Explorer Corps just because you're shy?
With a guy this built, I could cure his shyness real fast. Overnight!"
"He must be one of the new Explorers," another woman said. "The volunteers. The ones who don't have anything
wrong with them."
"Anyone who volunteers to be an Explorer has something wrong with them. Him. Whatever." A bald-headed woman
laid both hands on my wrist and stared straight into my eyes. "Come on, handsome, you can be honest with us. You're
an Explorer, and Explorers are never normal. What's wrong with you?"
I took a deep breath and told them all, "I'm stupid, okay? I'm stupid." Then I went back to my cabin and locked myself
in.

The whole next day I kept getting comm-messages saying, "Sorry," or "We were just teasing," or "That invitation is
still on for getting together in the service tunnels." Three women actually came to apologize at my door ... and later, a
man who said, "The women here are such bitches, aren't they? Forget 'em. Why don't you come down to my cabin for
some sudsy VR?" I said thanks anyway, but maybe another time. After that, when somebody knocked I pretended I