"Michael Swanwick - Radiant Doors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

of paralogical reprogramming, stay in one part of the camp, and the mods, those
with functional normative modifications, stay in another. I found myself
wandering through crowds of people who had been "healed" of limbs, ears, and
even internal organsтАУthere seemed no sensible pattern. Sometimes our doctors
could effect a partial correction. But our primitive surgery was, of course, nothing
like that available in their miraculous age.

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 Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998



I'd taken a wrong turn trying to evade an eyeless, noseless woman who kept
grabbing at my blouse and demanding money, and gotten all turned around in the
process when, without noticing me, Gevorkian went striding purposefully by.

Which was so unexpected that, after an instant's shock, I up and followed her. It
didn't occur to me not to. There was something strange about the way she held
herself, about her expression, her posture. Something unfamiliar.

She didn't even walk like herself.

The vics had dismantled several tents to make a large open space surrounded by
canvas. Propane lights, hung from tall poles, blazed in a ring about it. I saw
Gevorkian slip between two canvas sheets and, after a moment's hesitation, I
followed her.

It was a rat fight.

The way a rat fight works, I learned that night, is that first you catch a whole
bunch of Norwegian rats. Big mean mothers. Then you get them in a bad mood,
probably by not feeding them, but there are any number of other methods that
could be used. Anyway, they're feeling feisty. You put a dozen of them in a big
pit you've dug in the ground. Then you dump in your contestant. A big guy with a
shaven head and his hands tied behind his back. His genitals are bound up in a
little bit of cloth, but other than that he's naked.

Then you let them fight it out. The rats leap and jump and bite and the big guy
tries to trample them underfoot or crush them with his knees, his chest, his
headтАУwhatever he can bash them with.

The whole thing was lit up bright as day, and all the area around the pit was
crammed with vics. Some shouted and urged on one side or the other. Others
simply watched intently. The rats squealed. The human fighter bared his teeth in a
hideous rictus and fought in silence.


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 Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998