"James Patrick Kelly - Dividing the Sustain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

Zola shook herself. “We think Been is wonderful. Isn’t that right?”
 “Yes.”

“Of course.”

“And we support his decision to.. .um.. .change himself,” said Nelly.
“Definitely.”

Consensus on this subject was also enthusiastically confirmed.

“It’s just that he doesn’t quite fit—”

Ilona interrupted before Sandor could finish. “This baby thinks your friend
should have a birthday party.” She pushed her chair back and stood up with
difficulty, her belly barely clearing the edge of the table. “If there is a party, this baby
would like you to invite both it and its father.” She rested her hands on the table
wearily. “I can’t speak for Captain Quellan, but I can assure you that this baby
would be certain to attend.”

****

Throwing a party on the Nine Ball was so complicated that very few of the colonists
had managed it. Members of a single pod could gather eas-ily enough in their
common room, and they might invite a few guests, depending on whether they could
reach consensus about intruding into one another’s personal space. But if more than
one pod wanted to socialize, it would have to be in public space, which was at a
premium on the Nine Ball. The AgCore had room enough, but was not particularly
party-friendly. There was a pungent iron stink in the abattoir where Molly, the Nine
Ball’s amiable fatling, sloughed off slabs of her living light and darkmeat. And the
CO 2 in the greenhouse ran to six percent—good for the hydroponic plants, fatal for
parties. There wasn’t much open space in the library. The virtuality shells lining the
VRCore were ninety percent singles and ten percent doubles. The cafeteria was in
continuous use, with the eighth seating for any given meal being immediately
followed by the first seating of the next meal. When the two meeting rooms weren’t
booked by one of the colonists’ sixteen Infrastructure Planning Groups or the
harmony circles, they were being used by the various meetups which had formed
during the run to Little Chin. These ranged from Amateur Astronomy to Zen League
Baseball. The Space-Friendly Pet Meetup alone had a dozen subsections: spiders,
ants, pretters, frogs, turtles, snakes, mice, gerbils, hamsters, ferrets, squee, and
birds.

The other complication with throwing a party was drawing up a guest list. In a
society where everyone was friendly but nobody was much of a friend, how were
Been’s podmates to decide who to invite to his birthday party? For there was going
to be a party, and in a most unusual place. To the general astonishment of all aboard,
even the crew, Captain Harlen Quellan himself had offered the ControlCore for
Been’s birthday party. It was widely assumed, at least among the colonists, that this
meant the Captain would be making his first public appearance of the run. The guest
list Been and his podmates finally decided upon was an odd mix of crew and