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

If I wanted to defend myself I had to start all over, because those skills died with Fox 3.

No, all the advantages were with my killer. The killer started off with the advantage of surpriseтАФsince I
had no notion of who it wasтАФand learned more about me every time he or she succeeded in killing me.

What to do? I didn't even know where to start. I ran through everyone I knew, looking for an enemy,
someone who hated me enough to kill me again and again. I could find no one. Most likely it was
someone Fox 1 had met during that year she lived after the recording.
The only answer I could come up with was emigration. Just pull up stakes and go to Mercury, or Mars,
or even Pluto. But would that guarantee my safety? My killer seemed to be an uncommonly persistent
person. No, I'd have to face it here, where at least I knew the turf.

It was the next day before I realized the extent of my loss. I had been robbed of an entire symphony.

For the last thirty years I had been an Environmentalist. I had just drifted into it while it was still an infant
art form. I had been in charge of the weather machines at the Transvaal disneyland, which was new at the
time and the biggest and most modern of all the environmental parks in Luna. A few of us had started
tinkering with the weather programs, first for our own amusement. Later we invited friends to watch the
storms and sunsets we concocted. Before we knew it, friends were inviting friends and the Transvaal
people began selling tickets.

I gradually made a name for myself, and found I could make more money being an artist than being an
engineer. At the time of my last recording I had been one of the top three Environmentalists on Luna.

Then Fox 1 went on to compose Liquid Ice. From what I read in the reviews, two years after the fact, it
was seen as the high point of the art to date. It had been staged in the Pennsylvania disneyland, before a
crowd of three hundred thousand. It made me rich.

The money was still in my bank account, but the memory of creating the symphony was forever lost. And
it mattered.

Fox 1 had written it, from beginning to end. Oh, I recalled having had some vague ideas of a winter
composition, things I'd think about later and put together. But the whole creative process had gone on in
the head of that other person who had been killed.


L
8 John Varley

The Phantom of Kansas 9

How is a person supposed to cope with that? For one bitter moment I considered calling the bank and
having them destroy my memory cube. If I died this time, I'd rather die completely. The thought of a Fox
5 rising from that table. ... It was almost too much to bear. She would lack everything that Fox 1, 2, 3,
and me, Fox 4, had experienced. So far I'd had little time to add to the personality we all shared, but
even the bad times are worth saving.

It was either that, or have a new recording made every day. I called the bank, did some figuring, and
found that I wasn't wealthy enough to afford that. But it was worth exploring. If I had a new recording
taken once a week I could keep at it for about a year before I ran out of money.