"M. John Harrison - Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison John M)

Bella Cray laughed.
'Do you think you could do that for her?' she said.
After they had gone, Vesicle sat in his chair, repeating: 'Do you think you could do that?' and, 'You
see a guy like that, we're the first to know,' until he thought he had the intonation right. Then he went over
to look at the tanks. He got a rag out of a cupboard and wiped the dust off them. He was wiping
Chianese's tank when he realised it was the warm one. 'Who is this guy,' he asked himself, 'the Cray
sisters want him all of a sudden? No one ever wanted him before.' He tried to remember what Chianese
looked like but he couldn't. Twinkies all looked the same to him.
He went out to a stall and got himself another fish curry. 'You see a guy like that,' he tried
experimentally to the stallholder after he had paid, 'we're the first to know.'
The stallholder stared at him.
'The first,' Vesicle said.
New Men, she thought, as she watched him walk away up Pierpoint, one leg going out at an odd
angle. What are they on?
Drawn by the radio and TV ads of the twentieth century, which had reached them as faltering wisps
and cobwebs of communica-tion (yet still full of a mysterious, alien vitality), the New Men had invaded
Earth in the middle 2100s. They were bipedal, humanoid -if you stretched a point тАФ and uniformly tall
and white-skinned, each with a shock of flaming red hair. They were indistinguishable from some kinds of
Irish junkies. It was difficult to tell the sexes apart. They had a kind of pliable, etiolated feel about their
limbs. To start with, they had great optimism and energy. Everything about Earth amazed them. They
took over and, in an amiable, paternalistic way, misunderstood and mismanaged everything. It appeared
to be an attempt to understand the human race in terms of a 1982 Coke ad. They produced food no one
could eat, outlawed politics in favour of the kind of bureaucracy you find in the subsidised arts, and
buried enormous machinery in the subcrust which eventually killed millions. After that, they seemed to
fade away in embarrassment, taking to drugs, pop music and the twink-tank which was then an exciting if
less than reliable new entertainment technology.
Thereafter, they spread with mankind, like a kind of wrenched commentary on all that expansion and
free trade. You often found them at the lower levels of organised crime. Their project was to lit in, but
they were fatally retrospective. They were always saying:
'I really like this cornflakes thing you have, man. You know;' Vesicle went back to the tank farm. The
head-ends of the tanks protruded a couple of feet from their shoulder-height plyboard cubicles, like
stupidly baroque brass coffins covered with cheap decorative detail. YOU CAN BE ANYTHING YOU
WANT, claimed the shoot-up posters on the back wall of each cubicle. Chianese's tank was warmer
than it had been. Vesicle could see why: the twink was out of credit. He had maybe half a day left, this
was according to readouts in the tank fascia, and then it was the cold world for him. The tank proteome,
a mucoid slime of nutrients and tailored hormones, was beginning to prepare his body for the life he left
behind.

Three thirty on a grey Friday afternoon in March. The East River was the colour of puddled iron. Since
midday, westbound traffic had been backing up from Honaluchi Bridge. Chinese Ed stuck his head out
the side window of his ramrod Dodge, into the smell of burned diesel and lead, and tried to get a look at
what was ahead. Nothing. Something was broken up there, the lights were oil, someone had melted
down; the people up there were on overload тАФ office overload, 2.4 kids overload, shitcan overload тАФ
and had left their cars and were dully beating on one another to no good purpose. Who knew what had
happened? It was the same old life. Ed shook his head at the futility of mankind, turned off the Capital
traffic report and turned instead to Rita Robinson.
'Hey, Rita,' he said.
 Two or three minutes later her peppermint and white candy-stripe skirt was up around her waist.
'Steady, Ed,' advised Rita. 'We could be here some time.'
Ed laughed. 'Steady Eddy,' he said. 'That's me.'