"Norman Spinrad - Triceratops" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spinrad Norman)

his country: a politically touchy, politely arrogant economic overlord, with infinitely refined
aesthetic sensibilities inexplicably combined with a pack-rat lust for the silliest of our old
junk. One minute Ito seemed so superior in every way, and the next he was a stupid, childish
sucker. I've been doing business with the Japanese for years, and I still don't really understand
them. The best I can do is guess around the edges of whatever their inner reality actually is, and
hope I hit what works. And this time out, with a million yen or more dangling in front of me, I
had guessed wrong three times and now I was dragging my tail home with a dissatisfied customer
whose very posture seemed designed to let me know that I was a crass, second-rate boob, and that
he was one of the lords of creation!
"Mr. Harris! Mr. Harris! Over there! That magnificent structure!" Ito was suddenly almost
shouting; his eyes were bright with excitement; and he was actually smiling.
He was pointing due south along the East River. The Manhattan bank was choked with the
ugliest public housing projects imaginable, and the Brooklyn shore was worse: one of those huge,
sprawling, so called industrial parks, low windowless buildings, geodesic warehouses, wharves, a
few _ freight-booster launching pads. Only one structure stood out, there was only one thing Ito
could've meant: the structure linking the housing project on the Manhattan side with the
industrial park on the Brooklyn shore.
Mr. Ito was pointing at the Brooklyn Bridge.
"The . . . ah . . . bridge, Mr. Ito?" I managed to say with a straight face. As far as I
knew, the Brooklyn Bridge had only one claim to historicity: it was the butt of a series of jokes
so ancient that they weren't funny anymore. The Brooklyn Bridge was what old
comic con men traditionally sold to sucker tourists, greenhorns or hicks they used to call them,
along with phony uranium stocks and gold-painted bricks.
So I couldn't resist the line: "You want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge, Mr. Ito?" It was so
beautiful; he had put me through such hassles, and had finally gotten so damned high and mighty
with me, and now I was in effect calling him an idiot to his face and he didn't know it.
In fact, he nodded eagerly in answer like a straight man out of some old joke and said, "I
do believe so. Is it for sale?"
I slowed the jumper to forty, brought her down to a hundred feet, and swallowed my giggles
as we approached the crumbling old monstrosity. Two massive and squat stone towers supported the
rusty cables from which the bed of the bridge was suspended. The jumper had made the bridge
useless years ago; no one had bothered to maintain it and no one had bothered to tear it down.
Where the big blocks of dark gray stone met the water, they were encrusted with putrid looking
green slime. Above the waterline, the towers were whitened with about a century's worth of guano.
It was hard to believe that Ito was serious. The bridge was a filthy, decayed, reeking old
monstrosity. In short, it was just what Ito deserved to be sold.
"Why, yes, Mr. Ito," I said, "I think I might be able to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge."
I put the jumper on hover about a hundred feet from one of the filthy old stone towers.
Where the stones weren't caked with seagull guano, they were covered with about an inch of black
soot. The roadbed was cracked and pitted and thickly paved with garbage, old shells, and more
guano; the bridge must've been a seagull rookery for decades. I was mighty glad that the jumper
was airtight; the stink must've been terrific.
"Excellent!" Mr. Ito exclaimed. "Quite lovely, is it

not? I am determined to be the man to purchase the Brooklyn Bridge, Mr. Harris."
"I can think of no one more worthy of that honor than your esteemed self, Mr. Ito," I said
with total sincerity.

About four months after the last section of the Brooklyn Bridge was boosted to Kyoto, I
received two packages from Mr. Shiburo Ito. One was a mailing envelope containing a minicassette