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

Mercier chuckled and moved toward the staircase. “See you later,” he said over his shoulder.
Pareti and Peggy Flinn went down through sections to his stateroom. Living in an encapsulated environment
for upwards of six months at a stretch, the harvesters had evolved their own social relationships. Women who were
touchy about their sexual liaisons did not last long on the TexasTowers. There were seldom shore leaves for the
harvesters-who referred to themselves as “the black gang”--and consequently all conveniences were provided by the
company. Films, gourmet chefs, recreational sports, a fully-stocked and constantly changing library...and the lady
harvesters. It had begun with some of the women accepting “gratuities” from the men for sex, but that had had a
deleterious effect on morale, so now their basic shift wages and bonuses were supplemented by off-shift sex pay. It
was not uncommon for a reasonably good-looking and harvesting-adept woman to come back after an eight-or-nine-
month TexasTower stint with fifty thousand dollars in her credit account.
In the stateroom, they undressed.
“Jesus,” Peggy commented, “what happened to all your hair?”
It had been several months since they had been together.
 “I guess I’m going bald. “ Pareti shrugged it off. He wiped himself down completely with a disposable moist-
cloth from the dispenser, and tossed it into the incinerator iris.
“All over?” she asked incredulously.
“Hey, Peg,” Pareti said wearily. “I’ve been out for twelve hours. I’m whacked out, and I want to get some
sleep. Now do you want to or don’t you?”
She smiled at him. “You’re cute, Joe.”
“I’m a pudding, I am.” he replied, and sank down on the comfortable bed. She came to him and they had sex.
Then he went to sleep.

Fifty years before, the Third World War had finally broken out. It had been preceded by thirty years of Cold
War Phase II. Phase I had ended in the 1970s, when it was obvious that War was inevitable. Phase II had been the
defensive measures against overkill. They had sunk the subterranean cavern cities, the “canister cities” as the sub-
urban planners called them. (They weren’t called anything as unglamorous as that publicly. In the press releases they
were glowingly named Jade City, DownTown, Golden Grotto, North and South Diamond, Onyxville, Sub-City, East
Pyrites. And in the Smokies they sank the gigantic North American Continent antimissile complex, Ironwall, two
miles down.)
The breeding had started long before Phase I. Malthus had been right. Under the impetus of fear, people
multiplied as never before. And in canister cities like Lower Hong Kong, Labyrinth (under Boston) and New
Cuernavaca the enclosed conformity of life left them few pleasures. So they multiplied. And again. And geometrically
the progression filled the canister cities. They sent out tunnels and tubes and feelers, and the Earth filled up with the
squalling, teeming, hungry inhabitants of the land of fear. Aboveground only the military and scientific elite chose to
live, out of necessity.
Then came the War.
Bacteriologically, atomically, with laser and radiation it came.
It was bad enough on the North American continent: Los Angeles was slagged. Ironwall and half the
Smokies were gone, the missile complex buried forever under mountains that were now soft, rolling hills. Oak Ridge
went up in one bright flash. Louisville was reduced to rubble. Detroit and Birmingham no longer existed; in their
places were smooth reflective surfaces, almost perfectly flat like mirrored wafers of oxidized chrome plate.
New York and Chicago had been better protected. They had lost their suburbs, but not their canister
subcities. And the central cores of the metropolises remained. Battered, but still functioning.
It had been just as bad, even worse, on the other continents. But there had been time during the two Phases
of the Cold War to develop serums, remedies, antidotes, therapeutics. People were saved by the millions.
Even so...one could not inject an ear of corn.
Nor could one inoculate every cat and dog and wild boar and antelope and llama and Kodiak bear. Nor
could one seed the oceans and save the fish. Ecology went mad. Some species survived, others died out completely.
The Hunger Strikes and the Food Riots began.
And ended quickly. People too weak from hunger cannot fight. So the cannibal times came. And then the