"Jeff VanderMeer - Quin's Shanghai Circus (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

of sharp-hard edges and diffuse-soft curves, forslaking the thirst of
veldt and jungle on the video monitors.
We were both into the Living Art then -- the art you can touch and squeeze
and hold to your chest, not the dead, flat-screen scrawled stuff.
Pseudo-Mom and Pseudo-Dad thought us wonky, but that was okay, because
we'd always do our chores, and because later we found out they weren't our
real parents. Besides, we had true morals, true integrity. We knew who was
evil and who was good. The warm fuzzies always won out in the end.
Later, we moved on to genetic playdoh, child gods creating creatures that
moved, breathed, required attention for their mewling, crying tongues.
Creatures we could destroy if it suited our temperament. Not that any of
them lived very long.
My sister moved away from the Living Art when she got older, just as she
moved away from me. She processes the free market now.

So, since Shadrach certainly wouldn't move in to protect me and my art
from the cold pricklies of destruction -- I mean, I couldn't go it alone;
I had this horrible vision of sacrificing my ceramics, throwing them at
future Pick Dicks because the holo stuff wouldn't do any harm of a
physical nature (which made me think, hey, maybe this holo stuff is Dead
Art, too, if it doesn't impact on the world when you throw it) -- since
that was Dead Idea, I was determined to go down to Quin's Shanghai Circus
(wherever that was) and "git me a meerkat," as those hokey nuevo westerns
say. A meerkat for me, I'd say, tall as you please. Make it a double. In a
dirty glass cage. (Oh, I'd crack myself up if the Pick Dicks hadn't
already. Tricky, tricky pick dicks.)

But you're probably asking how a Living Artist such as myself -- a gaunt,
relatively unknown, and alone artiste -- could pull the strings and yank
the chains that get you an audience with the mysterious Quin.
Well, I admit to connections. I admit to Shadrach. I admit to tracking
Shadrach down in the Canal District.
Canal District -- Shadrach. They go together, like Volodya and Sirin, like
Ozzie and Elliot, Romeo and Juliard. You could probably find Shadrach down
there now, though I hardly see him any more on account of my sister
Nicola. That's how I met Shadrach, through Nicola when they shared an
apartment.
You see, Shadrach lived below-level for his first twenty-five years, and
when he came up he came up in the Canal District. "A wall of light," he
called it, and framed against this light, my sister Nicola, who served as
an orientation officer back then for peoples coming above ground. A wall
of light and my sweet sister Nicola, and Shadrach ate them both up.
Imagine: living in a world of darkness and neon for all of your life and
coming to the surface and there she is, an angel dressed in white to guide
you, to comfort you, to love you. If you had time, I'd tell you about
them, because it was a thing to covet, their love, a thing of beauty to
mock the cosmetics ads and the lingerie holos...
Anyway, ever since the space freighters stopped their old splash 'n' crash
in the cool down canals, the Canal District has been the hippest place in
town. Go there sometime and think of me, because I don't think I'll be