"starofep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

I laughed.

Then she realised how funny that was and she laughed too.

"See that beautiful woman at the bar?" she asked. "The one zonked on jugular-juice and out of it."

"So?"

"So she's dead ugly - honest."

"I thought you just said she was beautiful?"

Jo smiled, "You ever seen here before?"

"She doesn't come in here when I'm on. I'd recognize her."

"Yeah? Ever noticed an old woman, maybe a hundred and fifty? All bags and wrinkles? It's the same woman. She has the latest sub-dermal capillary electro-cosmetics. What you see there is a clever light show, a laser display to deceive the eye into beholding beauty. I want one."

"But you aren't ugly, Jo."

"I'm not beautiful."

"So you want me to get you the creds to buy this device?" I said. I thought I saw her logic. She was almost as terrified by her physical deterioration as she was by the thought of death, and she wanted to die looking good.

She nodded. "That and a cure. I want to live, and I want looks. Think I'm greedy?"

I shrugged. "Why live a lie?" I asked her, hypocritical.

"I want both, and you can help me get them."

So I asked, "How?"

"I've got a ship I want you to flux," she said simply.

Why live a lie? I had asked.

Sure I live a lie...

"Tell me about it," I said.

So Jo took me to the Louvre.

I protested that art wasn't my kick, but she insisted. When I tried to find out what she had planned, she clammed up. She stomped along the boulevard, pulling me after her. We made an odd couple, even among countless odd couples. She wore callipers to assist her wasted leg muscles, unadorned leg-irons without automation.
It was nighttime in Paris that month, a time for punks and freaks and assorted nocturnals to live it up beneath the darkened dome. Next month it would be Spring daylight for a stretch, and Gay Paree would cater to water-colourists and crystal artists and young lovers.

We did the Louvre.

We saw the Mona Lisa and a hundred other art treasures of Earth. Then we strolled around the hall of alien artifacts and came at last to the Chamber of Light, a circular room containing the Star of Epsilon VII. Jo just stared, open-mouthed.
The diamond burned as bright as any primary, filling the chamber with golden light. It stood on a pedestal, protected by a hexagon of high-powered lasers.