"Day Million by Frederik Pohl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 2)

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Far too many short stories have been tediously strung out as
novels, or inflated to novelette length, so that a sharp pang of
pleasure can be experienced when a story is written to the
proper lengthwhich in this case is jewel-like conciseness.
Mr. Pohl, with more years behind him as writer and editor
than he cares to remember, draws freely upon his talent and
experience to produce a smooth and cool entertainment that
conceals a wicked barb of truth.

DAY MILLION

rm~
Frederik Pohl

On this day I want to tell you about, which will be about ten
thousand years from now, there were a boy, a girl and a love
story.
Now, although I haven't said much so far, none of it is
true. The boy was not what you and I would normally think
of as a boy, because he was a hundred and eighty-seven years
old. Nor was the girl a girl, for other reasons. And the love
story did not entail that sublimation of the urge to rape, and
concurrent postponement of the instinct to submit, which we
at present understand in such matters. You won't care much
for this- story if you don't grasp these facts at once. If,
however, you will make the effort you'll likely enough find it
jampacked, chockful and tip-top-crammed with laughter, tears
and poignant sentiment which may, or may not, be worth-
while. The reason the girl was not a girl was that she was a
boy.
How angrily you recoil from the page! You say, who the
hell wants to read about a pair of queers? Calm yourself.
Here are no hot-breathing secrets of perversion for the coterie
trade. In fact, if you were to see this girl you would not guess
that she was in any sense a boy. Breasts, two; reproductive
organs, female. Hips, callipygean; face hairless, supra-orbital
lobes non-existent. You would term her female on sight,
although it is true that you might wonder just what species
she was a female of, being confused by the tail, the silky pelt
and the gill slits behind each ear.
Now you recoil again. Cripes, man, take my word for it.
This is a sweet kid, and if you, as a normal male, spent as
much as an hour in a room with her you would bend heaven
and Earth to get her in the sack. DoraWe will call her that;
her "name" was omicron-Dibase seven-group-totter-oot S
Doradus 5314, the last part of which is a colour specification
corresponding to a shade of greenDora, I say, was femi-