"Michael Swanwick - Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play
MICHAEL SWANWICK
From Hartwell, David - Year's Best SF 11 (2006)

Michael Swanwick (www.michaelswanwick.com) lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His novels
include the Nebula Award winner Stations of the Tide (1991), The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993),
and Bones of the Earth (2002). He is unquestionably one of the finest writers currently working in
SF and fantasy. His short fiction collections include Gravity's Angels (1991), A Geography of
Unknown Lands (1997), Moon Dogs (2000), Tales of Old Earth (2000), and The Periodic Table of
Science Fiction (2005). Three years ago, he began a series of stories set in a fantastic Cordwainer
Smithian future world, somewhat recovered from the destruction of the ancient civilization of the
Utopians, where biotechnology rules. A human, Aubrey Darger, and a genetically engineered
thief, lover, and dog, Sir BlaCkthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Preciuex, also known as "Surplus,"
plan complex scams.

"Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play" was published in Asi-mov's, and is the third in the series. Set
in a future Greece, an African post-human scientist uses biotech to invent gods patterned on some
of the ancient Greek gods as a means of controlling a society. Surplus and Darger have a wild
time. The story is a good illustration of Swanwick's current aesthetic: combining good
old-fashined SF ideas with a certain calculated luridness.

On a hilltop in Arcadia, Darger sat talking with a satyr.

"Oh, the sex is good," the satyr said. "Nobody could say it wasn't. But is it the be-all and end-all of life? I
don't see that." The satyr's name was Demetrios Papatragos, and evenings he played the saxophone in a
local jazz club.

"You're a bit of a philosopher," Darger observed.

"Oh, well, in a home-grown front porch sense, I suppose I am." The satyr adjusted the small leather
apron that was his only item of clothing. "But enough about me. What brings you here? We don't get that
many travelers these days. Other than the African scientists, of course."

"Of course. What are the Africans here for, anyway?"

"They are building gods."

"Gods! Surely not! Whatever for?"

"Who can fathom the ways of scientists? All the way from Greater Zimbabwe they came, across the
wine-dark Mediterranean and into these romance-haunted hills, and for what? To lock themselves up
within the ruins of the Monastery of St. Vasilios, where they labor as diligently and joylessly as if they
were indeed monks. They never come out, save to buy food and wine or to take the occasional blood
sample or skin scraping. Once, one of them offered a nymph money to have sex with him, if you can
believe such a thing."

"Scandalous!" Nymphs, though they were female satyrs, had neither hooves nor horns. They were,
however, not cross-fertile with humans. It was the only way, other than a small tail at the base of their
spines (and that was normally covered by their dresses), to determine their race. Needless to say, they
were as wildly popular with human men as their male counterparts were with women. "Sex is either freely