Звёздная лента книг — ⚝kosmobook

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2003-10-11

It Happened At The

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There were no human guards on the workers' entrance to the Flack Grand Studio. I didn't really expect to encounter any at all; according to the information I'd bought they only employed six of them. People tended to rely on machines for that sort of thing, and their trust can be misplaced, as I demonstrated to Brenda with one of the illegal gizmos. I waved it at the door, waited while red lights turned green, and the door sprung open. I'd been told that one of the three machines I had would deal with any security system I'd find in the Studio. I just hoped my trust wasn't misplaced, in either the shady characters who sold this sort of stuff or the machines themselves. We do trust the little buggers, don't we? I had no idea what the stinking thing was doing, but when it flashed a green light at me I trotted right in, like Pavlov's dog Spotski.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 192, для младшеклассников.

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2003-10-11

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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"Walter, I really don't want to hear about it." "Hildy, be reasonable, there's no one else who-" "This conversation got off on the wrong foot, Walter. Some way, you always manage to do that with me. I guess that's why I didn't come right up to you and say it, and that was a mistake, I see it now, so I'm going to—" He held up his hand, and once more I fell for it. "The reason I came," he said, looking down at the ground, then glancing up at me like a guilty child, " . . . well, I wanted to bring you this." He held out my fedora, more battered than ever from being stuffed into his back pocket. I hesitated, then took it from him. He had a sort of half smile on his face, and if there had been one gram of gloating in it I'd have hurled the damn thing right in his face. But there wasn't. What I saw was some hope, some worry, and, this being Walter, a certain gruff-but-almost-lovable diffidence. It must have been hard for him, doing this.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 190, для младшеклассников.

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2003-10-11

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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"That's when I started fighting death matches," he said. "I had to re-introduce an element of risk into my life." He held up a hand. "Not too much risk; I'm very good at what I do." And now he smiled, and it was beautiful. "And I do want to live again. That's what you've got to do, Hildy. You've got to find a way to experience risk again. It's a tonic like nothing I ever imagined." The questions were lining up in my mind, clamoring to get out. There was one more important than all the others. "What's to prevent the CC," I said, slowly, "from reviving you again, like he did to me, if you . . . make a mistake?"

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 190, для младшеклассников.

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claims

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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Because the reason a man like him had probably come here in the first place was the search for an illusory freedom and a dissatisfaction with the lack of opportunities for free enterprise in the larger society. He would have thrived on preInvasion Earth. The newer, less outward-bound human society he found himself born into chafed his entrepreneurial instincts. Et tu, Hildy? Journalist, cover thyself. Why do you think you started your damn cabin on the lone prairie? Wasn't it from vaguely-formed notions of always being constricted, of endless limitations on the dreams you had as a child? How dare you pity this man, you failed muckraker? If he ended up in this toy cowboy town because he yearned to be free of the endless restrictions needed in a machine-managed economy, what do you think brought you here, at last? Neither of us thought it out, but we came, just the same.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 190, для младшеклассников.

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2003-10-11

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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"Yes. I'm afraid I already have. Do you remember Andrew MacDonald's last words to you?" "I'm not likely to forget. He said 'tricked.' I have no idea what it meant." "It meant that I betrayed him. You don't follow slash-boxing, but included in the bodies of all formula classes are certain enhancements to normal human faculties. In the broader definition I've adopted for purposes of this argument—and the real situation is more complex than that, but I can't explain it to you—these enhancements are a part of me. At a critical moment in Andrew's last fight, one of these programs malfunctioned. The result was he was a fraction of a second slow in responding to an attack, and he sustained a wound that quickly led to fatal damage."

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 192, для младшеклассников.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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And now for the first of several digression . . . I can't simply gloss over those missing months with the explanation that you wouldn't be interested. You wouldn't, but certain things did happen, mostly of a negative nature, to get me from the CC to the kitchen table with Cricket, and it's worth relating a few of them to give a feel for my personal odyssey during that time. What I did was use my weekends on a Quest. Every Saturday I went to the Visitors Center and there I shed my secret identity as a mildmannered reporter to become a penny-ante Diogenes, searching endlessly for an honest game. So far all I'd found were endless variations of the mechanic's grip, but I was undaunted. Look in the Yellow Files under Philosophers, Professional, and you'll get a printout longer than Brenda's arm. Don't even try Counselors or Therapists unless you have a wheelbarrow to cart away the paper. But that's what I was doing. Once out in the real world again, I spent my Saturdays sampling the various ways other people had found to get through the day, and the next day, and the next day.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 190, для младшеклассников.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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HILDY (raggedly, receding) AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaah . . . sh— SOUND of door slamming. FADE OUT # I passed out, right there on the thrust of Kitten's enlightenment. I was only gone a few seconds, during which I re-lived a particularly fruitless episode early in my Quest; sort of a comic within a comic. I really wish that Shouter, Screamin' Sabina, had had cojones. My kick would have been right in the spiritual center. "What it was," I told Kitten as he helped me to my feet, "was the most powerful orgasm of my life. Jesus, Kitten, I think you've got something here. And this was only lesson one? Man, sign me up! I want to get into the advanced classes right away. I never would have dreamed it was possible to get off that way, much less such a . . . such an earthquake! Wow!"

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 190, для младшеклассников.

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CHAPTER TWENTY

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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"I won't cry. Not about that, not anymore. And not when it's over." And she didn't. # Brenda had arranged for our moment of privacy by not telling me Cricket had been assigned to cover the festivities at Armstrong Park. After our little romantic interlude—quite pleasant, thanks for asking—she confessed her ruse, and also that he was going to play hooky after the first few hours and should be arriving any minute, so let's get dressed, okay? I can't imagine why I worried about getting a head start on Liz. She got a head start on all of us, drinking on her way out to Armstrong and all the way back, as if Cricket needed any more causes for alarm.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 189, для младшеклассников.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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No, it seemed to me it was no coincidence the sighting had come at the base of that monument to high hopes, the Starship Robert A. Heinlein. I set about to explore as much of the old hulk as I could, but first I visited the library again and learned something of his history. Herewith, in brief, is the saga of failed dreams: The Heinlein was first proposed in 2010, by a group known as the L5 Society. It was to be humanity's first interstellar vessel, a remarkable idea when you consider that the Lunar colony at the time was quite small, still struggling year to year for funding. And it was to be another twenty years before the keel was laid, at L5, one of the Trojan libration points of the Earth/Luna system. L5 and L4 enjoyed several decades of prominence before the Invasion, and thrived for almost forty years afterwards. Today they are orbiting junkyards. Economic reasons again.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 187, для младшеклассников.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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Is that awful? I suppose it is, lying to a little girl, but I'd done worse in my life, and how badly did it hurt her? The whole gossip industry, flagshipped by the Nipple and the Shit, is of questionable moral worth to begin with, but it's a very old industry, and as such, must fill a basic human need. I've apologized for it enough here. The biggest difference in my stories to her was that, when I was writing it, it was usually nasty gossip. My stories to her were usually nice ones. I viewed it as paying my keep. If Scheherazade could do it, why not Hildy Johnson?

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 188, для младшеклассников.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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Maybe so, maybe not. We weren't talking radical change here, or anything that couldn't be done just as easily surgically, without raising the troublesome issues of more than one species of human being. But what about a human adapted to vacuum? I've no idea how to go about it, but it probably could be done. What would he look like? Would he feel superior to us? Would we be his brother, or his cousin, or what? one thing was sure: it would be a lot easier to do it genetically than with the knife. And I feel certain the end result would not look very human.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 192, для младшеклассников.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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I found myself getting detached from events. Maybe it was a reflex action, something to distance oneself from an abomination about to happen. Or maybe it was just too many things that couldn't be happening. This can't be happening. I'd silently shrieked it one too many times and now a mental numbness was setting in. I ought to be thinking of something to do. I ought to be talking to him, asking questions. Anything. Instead, I just sat there, squatting on my heels, and felt as if I'd like to go to sleep.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 189, для младшеклассников.

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could

Писатель: Варли, Джон

Глава в томе: Холодный пляж (engl)

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"Hildy. Hildy. Oh, god, I didn't want to do it." "Didn't want to do what? Liz, I don't have time for—" "I'm a drunk, Hildy. A goddam drunk." This was neither news, nor a well-kept secret. I didn't say anything, but listened to the sound of wracking sobs and watched the seconds tick off on my personal clock and waited for her to talk. "They said they could put me away for a long time, Hildy. A long, long time. I was scared, and I felt really awful. I was shaking and I was throwing up, only nothing came up, and they wouldn't let me have a drink."

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 192, для младшеклассников.

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