"Harlan Ellison - Pa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

What stared out at him was himself, bald Pareti. He had the suddenly pleasurable feeling that whatever manner the
goo infection in his body was taking to evolve itself, it would probably make him irresistible to women. All at once
he could not find it in his heart to think too unkindly of the goo.
 He had happy dreams of what joys and delights were in store for him if the goo, for instance, built him as big
as a horse, or if it heightened this already-obvious attraction women had for him, or if it--
He caught himself.
Uh-uh. No thank you. That was just what had happened to the other five. They had been taken over by the
goo. It had done what it had wanted with them. Well, he was going to fight it, battle it from invading him from the
top of his bald head to the soles of his uncallused feet.
He got dressed.
No indeed not. He wasn’t going to enjoy any more sex like he’d just had. (And it became obvious to him
that whatever the goo had done to the attraction-waves of his personality, it had also served to heighten his
perceptions in that area. It had been the best he’d ever had.)
He was going to grab a little fun in East pyrites, and then buy himself a parcel of land topside, find the right
woman, settle down, and buy himself a good position with one of the Companies.
He went back into the cabin of the lift. The other stewardess was on duty. She didn’t say anything, but the
one who had taken Pareti into the toilet did not show herself through the remainder of the flight, and her
replacement kept staring at Joe as though she wanted to nibble him with tiny teeth.

East pyrites, Nevada, was located eighty-seven miles south of the radioactive ghost town that had been
called Las Vegas. It was also three miles below it. It was conservatively rated one of the marvels of the world. Its
devotion to vice was obsessive, amounting to an almost puritanical drive to pleasure. In East pyrites the phrase had
been coined:

PLEASURE
IS A STERN DUTY
IMPOSED ON US
BY THE WORLD.

In East pyrites, the fertility cults of antiquity had been revived in deadly seriousness. Pareti found this to be
true as he stepped out of the dropshaft on the seventieth underlevel. A mass gangbang was in progress, in the middle
of the intersection of Dude Avenue and Gold Dust Boulevard, between fifty male members of the Ishtar Boppers and
ten lovely girls who had signed in blood their membership to the Swingers of Cybele.
He carefully avoided the embroglio. It looked like fun, but he wasn’t going to aid and abet the goo in taking
him over.
He hailed a taxi and stared at the scenery. The Temple of Strangers was served by the virgin daughters of the
town’s leading citizens; executions for impiety were held publicly in the Court of the Sun; Christianity was in
disrepute: it wasn’t any fun.
The old Nevadan custom of gambling was still observed, but had been elaborated, ramified and extended. In
East pyrites, the saying, “You bet your life,” had real and sinister meanings.
Many of the practices in East pyrites were un-Constitutional; others were implausible; and some were
downright inconceivable.
Pareti loved it at once.
He selected the Round-The-World Combination Hotel, close to the Hall of Perversions, just across the
street from the verdant expanse of Torture Garden. In his room, he showered, changed, and tried to decide what to
do first. Dinner in the Slaughterhouse, of course; then perhaps a little mild exercise in the cool darkness of the
Mudbath Club. After that--
He suddenly became aware that he was not alone. Someone or something was in the room with him.
He looked around. There was apparently nothing wrong, except that he could have sworn he had put his
jacket on a chair. Now it was on the bed, near him.