"John Varley - The Phantom of Kansas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

The room was perfectly silent for a while. At last I decided I should have that drink. He poured it for me,
and I drained it.

"Perhaps your mother should tell you more about it," Leander suggested. "She's been closer to the
situation. I was only made aware of it recently. Carnival?"
I found my way back to my apartment in a sort of daze. By the time I had settled in again the drug was
wearing off and I could face my situation with a clear head. But my skin was crawling.

Listening in the third person to things you've done is not the most pleasant thing. I decided it was time to
face some facts that all of us, including myself, do not like to think about. The first order of business was
to recognize that the things that were done by those three previous people were not done by me. I was a
new person, fourth in the line of succession. I had many things in common with the previous incarnations,
including all my memories up to that day I surrendered myself to the memory recording machine. But the
me of that time and place had been killed.

She lasted longer than the others. Almost a year, Carnival had said. Then her body was found at the
bottom of Hadley Rille. It was an appropriate place for her to die; both she and myself liked to go hiking
out on the surface for purposes of inspiration.

Murder was not suspected that time. The bank, upon hearing of myтАФno, herтАФdeath, started a clone
from the tissue sample I had left with my recording. Six lunations

6 John Varley

The Phantom of Kansas 7

later, a copy of me was infused with my memories and told that she had just died. She had been shaken,
but seemed to be adjusting well when she, too, was killed.

This time there was much suspicion. Not only had she survived for less than a lunation after her
reincarnation, but the circumstances were unusual. She had been blown to pieces in a tube-train
explosion. She had been the only passenger in a two-seat capsule. The explosion had been caused by a
homemade bomb.

There was still the possibility that it was a random act, possibly by political terrorists. The third copy of
me had not thought so. I don't know why. That is the most maddening thing about memory recording:
being unable to profit by the experiences of your former selves. Each time I was killed, it moved me back
to square one, the day I was recorded.

But Fox 3 had reason to be paranoid. She took extraordinary precautions to stay alive. More
specifically, she tried to prevent circumstances that could lead to her murder. It worked for five lunations.
She died as the result of a fight, that much was certain. It was a very violent fight, with blood all over the
apartment. The police at first thought she must have fatally injured her attacker, but analysis showed all
the blood to have come from her body.

So where did that leave me, Fox 4? An hour's careful thought left the picture gloomy indeed. Consider:
each time my killer succeeded in murdering me, he or she learned more about me. My killer must be an
expert on Foxes by now, knowing things about me that I myself do not know. Such as how I handle
myself in a fight. I gritted my teeth when I thought of that. Carnival told me that Fox 3, the canniest of the
lot, had taken lessons in self-defense. Karate, I think she said. Did I have the benefit of it? Of course not.