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

manipulator. "All kinds of people go out dancing," she said from across the
room. "Not just young people. It's a very human thing to do."

"I don't know," Jerry said. "I guess it was fun when I was the right age for
it, but you get older and settle down."

"I certainly hope not," Audrey answered. "It's when you stop doing young
things that you start getting old."

"Hmm. Maybe you're right, but I just don't feel like going out much anymore."

"Come on. You don't sound so old to me.

"How old do you think I am?"

"You sound too young to be sitting at home. What are you, thirty-five? Forty?"

Back home in his RC rig, Jerry smiled. He was fifty-three and feeling ten
years older. In his younger days, he had not been unattractive, but he had
developed a paunch from so many years of inactivity; and the few hairs on his
head that hadn't fallen out yet were decidedly gray.

"Yeah," he lied. "Forty. What are you, late twenties or so?"

"You know you're never supposed to ask a lady that question."

"Yeah, I suppose. Sorry."

"But if it's any help, the manufacturing sticker on my chassis says I was
made in 2038."

"Very funny."

"So why aren't you laughing? Lighten up, McGraw."

Jerry fell silent as Audrey quickly installed the new arm and tested it with
her instruments. Perhaps he was being an old stick in the mud, but this was,
after all, the workplace. Jerry goosed up the feedback a bit while she still
cradled the new arm, and he imagined a flesh-and-blood person holding his arm,
instead of the cold titanium and carbon fibers.

"Where are you working from, Audrey?" he asked.

Audrey lifted his arm carefully, checking her instrument readings, then
gently lowered it to his side. "Me?" she said. "New Jersey."

"You're from Jersey? Me, too. What part?"

"Woodbridge."