"John Varley - Picnic On Nearside" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

Fear of the bomb, not this awful man. Her stomach was twisted into a pretzel, and here he sat, thinking
of sex. What was he, anyway?

The capsule lurched again, and they were on their way.
 The deserted Leystrasse made a gleaming frame of stainless steel storefronts and fluorescent
ceiling for the improbable pair hurrying from the tube station in the Plaza: Birkson in his anachronistic
golf togs, cleats rasping on the polished rock floor, and Bach, half a meter taller than him, thin like a
Lunarian. She wore the regulation uniform of the Municipal Police, which was a blue armband and cap
with her rank of chief emblazoned on them, a shoulder holster, an equipment belt around her waist
from which dangled the shining and lethal-looking tools of her trade, cloth slippers, and a few scraps of
clothing in arbitrary places. In the benign environment of Lunar corridors, modesty had died out ages
ago.

They reached the cordon which had been established around the bomb, and Bach conferred with
the officer in charge. The hall was echoing with off-key music.

"What's that?" Birkson asked.

Officer Walters, the man to whom Bach had been speaking, looked Birkson over, weighing just
how far he had to go in deference to this grinning weirdo. He was obviously the bomb expert Bach
had referred to in an earlier call, but he was a Terran, and not a member of the force. Should he be
addressed as 'sir'? He couldn't decide.

"It's the bomb. It's been singing to us for the last five minutes. Ran out of things to say, I guess."

"Interesting." Swinging the putter lazily from side to side, he walked to the barrier of painted steel
crowd-control sections. He started sliding one of them to the side.

"Hold it... ah, sir," Walters said.

"Wait a minute, Birkson," Bach confirmed, running to the man and almost grabbing his sleeve.
She backed away at the last moment.

"It said no one's to cross that barrier," Walters supplied to Bach's questioning glance. "Says it'll
blow us all to the Farside."

"What is that damn thing, anyway?" Bach asked, plaintively.

Birkson withdrew from the barrier and took Bach aside with a tactful touch on the arm. He
spoke to her with his voice just low enough for Walters to hear.

"It's a cyborged human connected to a bomb, probably a uranium device," he said. "I've seen the
design. It's just like one that went off in Johannesburg three years ago. I didn't know they were still
making them."

"I heard about it," Bach said, feeling cold and alone. "Then you think it's really a bomb? How do
you know it's a cyborg? Couldn't it be tape recordings, or a computer?"

Birkson rolled his eyes slightly, and Bach reddened. Damn it, they were reasonable questions.
And to her surprise, he could not defend his opinion logically. She wondered what she was stuck with.