"(Brian Plante - Moondance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Plante Brian)

"Pleased to meet you, Jerry Noonan. I'm Audrey."

"Audrey. You know, we don't get too many female operators up here on the Moon."

Audrey chuckled and said, "and at these prices you won't get too many more."

"Huh?" Jerry mumbled.

"You know, the old bar joke about the talking kangaroo."

A joke? I'm sorry, I don't get out too much anymore. Not to bars, anyway."

"Too bad. Bars can sometimes be . . . useful," Audrey said as she attached a
wire harness into the test socket of his damaged arm. She walked her robot
over to a console on the other side of the room, again bouncing and swaying
in her unusual fashion.

"You walk funny for a robot," Jerry said.

"Funny?"

"Not funny ha-ha. Just different for a robot. It's kind of a girlish walk."

"Hmmm. Being a woman, I suppose I can live with that. You better turn down
the sensitivity on that arm now, or this might hurt a bit."

Jerry just barely felt a jolt of power surge through the manipulator before
he turned off the feedback. Without him controlling it, the arm began
flailing up and down under the mechanic's overriding commands.

"That didn't come out right," Jerry said. "I like the way you walk. It's
very feminine, if a pointy, metal cylinder can be feminine. Do you move like
that on purpose, or is it just the way you walk naturally?"

"Hmmm. I've never thought about it too much, so I suppose it's natural.
Probably something carried over from my dancing."

"You're a dancer?"

"Not a ballet dancer or anything like that," Audrey said, bouncing back over
to Jerry's side. "Just some social dancing on the weekends. Jerry, this arm
is shot. I'll just replace the whole thing, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever it needs. Do young people still go out dancing much these
days? It's been so long since I've been out, but I used to go dancing before-"
Jerry was about to say "Before I was married," but just then she popped off
the fault, manipulator, and he fell silent as he gaped into the empty socket
where his arm had been.

Audrey shimmied over to an equipment locker and unpacked a replacement