"John Varley - Pusher" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

alertness for sexual signal's. 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 him-
which she did with increasing frequency-she 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.


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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 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.
That was fine with Ian. It made what he planned to do

much easier. He had his excuses ready, of course, but it could be embarrassing to be confronted
with the questions representatives of the law ask single, middle-aged men who hang around
playgrounds.
For a moment he considered, with real concern, how the parents of these children could
feel so confident, even with mental conditioning. After all, no one was conditioned until he had
first done something. New maniacs were presumably being produced every day. Typically, they looked
just like everyone else until they proved their difference by some demented act.
Somebody ought to give those parents a stern lecture, he thought.

"Who are you?"
Ian frowned. Not eleven, surely, not seen up this close. Maybe not even ten. She might be
as young as eight.
Would eight be all right? He tasted the idea with his usual caution, looked around again
for curious eyes. He saw none.
"My name is Ian. What's yours?"
"No. Not your name. Who are you?"
"You mean what do I do?"
"Yes."
"I'm a pusher."
She thought that over, then smiled. She had her permanent teeth, crowded into a small jaw.
"You give away pills?"
He laughed. "Very good," he said. "You must do a lot of reading." She said nothing, but
her manner indicated she was pleased.
"No," he said. "That's an old kind of pusher. I'm the other kind. But you knew that,