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

Ian concentrated on the girls. He had tried with boys before, long ago, but it had not worked out.

He watched one black child for a time, trying to estimate her age. He thought it was around eight or
nine. Too young. Another one was more like thirteen, judging from her shirt. A possibility, but he'd
prefer something younger. Somebody less sophisticated, less suspicious.

Finally he found a girl he liked. She was brown, but with startling blond hair. Ten? Possibly eleven.
Young enough, at any rate.

He concentrated on her and did the strange thing he did when he had selected the right one. He didn't
know what it was, but it usually worked. Mostly it was just a matter of looking at her, keeping his
eyes fixed on her no matter where she went or what she did, not allowing himself to be distracted by
anything. And sure enough, in a few minutes she looked up, looked around, and her eyes locked with
his. She held his gaze for a moment, then went back to her play.

He relaxed. Possibly what he did was nothing at all. He had noticed, with adult women, that if one
really caught his eye so he found himself staring at her, she would usually look up from what she
was doing and catch him. It never seemed to fail. Talking to other men, he had found it to be a
common experience. It was almost as if they could feel his gaze. Women had told him it was
nonsense, or if not, it was just reaction to things seen peripherally by people trained to alertness for
sexual signals. Merely an unconscious observation penetrating to the awareness; nothing mysterious,
like ESP.

Perhaps. Still, Ian was very good at this sort of eye contact. Several times he had noticed the girls
rubbing the backs of their necks while he observed them, or hunching their shoulders. Maybe they'd
developed some kind of ESP and just didn't recognize it as such.

Now he merely watched her. He was smiling, so that every time she looked up to see himтАФwhich
she did with increasing frequencyтАФshe saw a friendly, slightly graying man with a broken nose and
powerful shoulders. His hands were strong too. He kept them clasped in his lap.



Presently she began to wander in his direction.

No one watching her would have thought she was coming toward him. She probably didn't know it
herself. On her way, she found reasons to stop and tumble, jump on the soft rubber mats, or chase a
flock of noisy geese. But she was coming toward him, and she would end up on the park bench
beside him.

He glanced around quickly. As before, there were few adults in this playground. It had surprised him
when he arrived. Apparently the new conditioning techniques had reduced the numbers of the

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Blue Champagne

violent and twisted to the point that parents felt it safe to allow their children to run without
supervision. The adults present were involved with each other. No one had given him a second
glance when he arrived.