"Barry N. Malzberg - Uncoupling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

I came to the Towers fuming. The walk across town had bent
my breath, shaken the substance, broken the spirit (too often I
tend to think in expletives, but pardon: it is an old trait), but the
flesh unmortified quivered, reaching for its own purposes. At the
unoccupied desk I stood there for a while, inhaling great
mouthfuls of hydrogenated 02 (one of the chief lures of the
Towers is that it offers an atmosphere of pure oxygen, no small
thing in these difficult, crumpling times) and screaming for
service. “Come here!” I shouted to the gleaming walls, the
spick-and-span corridors, the aerated passageways of the



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 Uncoupling by Barry Malzberg



fluorescenced. “I need attention. Je bien attendu. Je desiree a
fornication.”
An attendant appeared, neutered in flowing robes. Everything
in the Towers is done for effect; go one inch under the surface
and the substance disappears. Nevertheless, one must
persevere. The world is plastic. The world is corrupt. Still, in or
out of it there is no alternative.
“Je suis au pardonne, monsieur,” the attendant said in
execrable French. “Je desire a’ service mais je non comprendre
votre desiree .... ”
“Speak English!” I snarled, hitting the counter, a tall, bitter
man in my late thirties, the snakes of purpose wending their
way through his shattered but wise features. (I often tend to
depersonalize, sometimes lapsing even into the third person in
my desperate attempts to scrape free of the trap of self: au

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 Uncoupling by Barry Malzberg



pardonniere.) “Speak English!” the tall, bitter man shouted, his
voice echoing through the amplifiers in the walls of the Towers,
and the attendant trembled, adjusted his/her robes more tightly
about himself/herself.
“Yes,” he/her said. “I am here to help you, all of us are here
to help you, but you must understand, you must simply
understand that in order to achieve you must modulate ... “
“I will not modulate!” I screamed, slamming a bitter fist into
the gleaming and refractive surfaces of the desk ‘. “There is no
need for modulation. I am entitled to service, service and