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

through the various parks, usually the one where the piece will be performed. I do that, too. You have to,
to get the lay of the land. A computer can tell you what it looks like in terms of thermoclines and updrafts
and pocket ecologies, but you have to really go there and feel the land, taste the air, smell the trees,
before you can compose a storm or even a summer shower. It has to be a part of the land.

But my inspiration comes from the dry, cold, airless sur-

The Phantom of Kansas 13

face that so few Lunarians really like. I'm not a burrower; I've never loved the corridors, as so many of
my friends profess to do. I think I see the black sky and harsh terrain as a blank canvas, a feeling I never
really get in the disney-lands where the land is lush and varied and there's always some weather in
progress even if it's only partly cloudy and warm.

Could I compose without those long, solitary walks?

Run that through again: could I afford not to?
"All right, I'll stay inside like a good girl."

I was in luck. What could have been an endless purgatory turned into creative frenzy such as I had never
experienced. My frustrations at being locked in my apartment translated themselves into grand sweeps of
tornadoes and thunderheads. I began writing my masterpiece. The working title was A Conflagration of
Cyclones. That's how angry I was. My agent later talked me into shortening it to a tasteful Cyclone, but
it was always a conflagration to me.

Soon I had managed virtually to forget about my killer. I never did completely; after all, I needed the
thought of him to flog me onward, to serve as the canvas on which to paint my hatred. I did have one
awful thought, early on, and I brought it up to Isadora.

"It strikes me," I said, "that what you've built here is the better mousetrap, and I'm the hunk of cheese."

"You've got the essence of it," she agreed.

"I find I don't care for the role of bait."

"Why not? Are you scared?"

I hesitated, but what the hell did I have to be ashamed of?

"Yeah. I guess I am. What can you tell me to make me stay here when I could be doing what all my
instincts are telling me to do, which is run like hell?"

"That's a fair question. This is the ideal situation, as far as the police are concerned. We have the victim in
a place that can be watched perfectly safely, and we have the killer on the loose. Furthermore, this is an
obsessed killer, one who cannot stay away from you forever. Long before

14 John Varley

he is able to make a strike at you we should pick him up as he scouts out ways to reach you."