"John Varley - Blue Champagne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

Blue Champagne


John Varley

Blue Champagne

This book is dedicated to Ricia, who did everything but write it.



Contents

The Pusher
Blue Champagne
Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo
Options
Lollipop and the Tar Baby
The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged)
The Unprocessed Word
Press Enter




The Pusher
Things change. Ian Haise expected that. Yet there are certain constants, dictated by function and use.
Ian looked for those and he seldom went wrong.

The playground was not much like the ones he had known as a child. But playgrounds are built to
entertain children. They will always have something to swing on, something to slide down,
something to climb. This one had all those things, and more. Part of it was thickly wooded. There
was a swimming hole. The stationary apparatus was combined with dazzling light sculptures that
darted in and out of reality. There were animals too: pygmy rhinoceros and elegant gazelles no taller
than your knee. They seemed unnaturally gentle and unafraid.

But most of all, the playground had children.

Ian liked children.

He sat on a wooden park bench at the edge of the trees, in the shadows, and watched them. They
came in all colors and all sizes, in both sexes. There were black ones like animated licorice

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Blue Champagne

jellybeans and white ones like bunny rabbits, and brown ones with curly hair and more brown ones
with slanted eyes and straight black hair and some who had been white but were now toasted
browner than some of the brown ones.