"John Kessel - Sunlight or Rock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

SUNLIGHT OR ROCK by John Kessel

John Kessel is the co-director of the Creative Writing program at North
Carolina State University in Raleigh. He has taught courses in fiction writing,
American literature, and the literature of the fantastic at NCSU since 1982. тАЬSunlight
or RockтАЭ is a sequel to his novella тАЬStories for MenтАЭ (October/ November 2002),
which won the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award in 2003. John is co-editor, with
James Patrick Kelly, of Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology. The book
has just been released by Tachyon Publications.

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In Mayer colony, Erno lived in the Hotel Gijon, on Calle Viernes, in a
two-by-three-meter room barely high enough for him to stand up in. The room
contained a gel mattress, a false window, and a thousand bugs. He assumed that
anything he said or did in the hotel was being recorded for later perusal, but in fact
Erno could not imagine why anyone would care what any of the residents of Calle
Viernes did.

Most likely the bugs were the remnants of some jackleg enterprise that had
failed. Some would-be entrepreneur had seeded self-replicating monitors throughout
the colony, hoping to sell the spy service, or the idea of the spy service, or
protection against the spy service. The thing had fallen through, and now unless you
lived in the park and could afford scrubbers, you dealt with the bugs.

Erno sat up on the edge of the gel mat, cross-legged, trying to get himself
moving. Too much wine last night. He stared out the window at an earth landscape:
sunrise over forested mountains, pink and blue sky with streaks of white cloud, river
in the valley catching silver fire from the sun. In the distance an eagle circled above
the cliffs. Erno took a deep breath of MayerтАЩs slightly sour air and relaxed the
muscles in his back and shoulders. The eagle froze dead in mid-glide, the foliage in
the trees stopped movingтАФthen the bird jumped back and repeated its swoop: a
glitch in the ancient image generator.

Erno had been watching this stuttering eagle for six months now. After ten
minutes he stretched to his feet, shook the bugs from his arms and legs, applied
probiots to his groin and armpits, and drew on his stiff overalls. He drank the ounce
of water left in the bulb by his bed and ate the leftover soycake from last night.

Outside his room he ran into Alois Reuther, who lived in the next room. Alois,
about to scuttle through his door, raised his left arm in greeting. It looked completely
normal. The last time Erno had seen him, Alois had sported a glittering metal hand
with six digits and a special manipulator.

тАЬNew hand?тАЭ Erno asked.
 тАЬThe newest,тАЭ said Alois. He swiveled the hand 360 degrees and extended his
index finger twenty centimeters. The fact that the hand looked like flesh rather than a
machine was unsettling. тАЬWatch,тАЭ he said. Alois touched his finger to the dim light
fixture in the ceiling and the light brightened immediately.