"Jerry Oltion - The Artist Makes A Splash" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

in store for them?”
“No pun intended.”

“What? Oh. No, actually, it wasn’t.” She laughed again, turning heads in the cafeteria as they entered.
People smiled, and Talan felt a twinge of envy. Everyone liked Nendy. Him they tolerated because they
liked his work-several pieces of which adorned the cafeteria walls-but she was popular for herself. She
was the work of art, and all the more so for being unconscious of it.

They picked up trays and went through the line. Dinner was some kind of stringy pasta with white sauce.
Lumps in the sauce might have been synthetic meat or just lumps from not being stirred well enough.

“Maybe steak isn’t such a bad idea,” he said.

“How about flowers?” asked Nendy. “Made out of glass or something,” she amended quickly when he
opened his mouth to protest that they, too, were organic.

Now there was an idea. Hand out glass roses at the door, and let everyone smash their own individual
blossom.

And cut their feet on the glass shards, and accidentally stab one another with the stems. “No,” he said,
“broken glass and crowds didn’t mix.” Besides, anyone could make a glass flower. He wanted something
uniquelyhis . Something appropriately grandiose, that people would talk about for years to come.

As they ate, he studied the colonists around him. They dressed in soft synthetic fabrics dyed in equally
soft colors, wore lightweight slippers with flat non-skid soles, and spoke in soft voices so they wouldn’t
disturb the people around them. Everything about them was adapted to life inside a sealed environment.
Even Nendy, with her infectious laugh and sparkling eyes, was a dome dweller. She was in many ways
the most perfectly adapted of anyone to life in a bubble. She didn’t merely tolerate it; she thrived on it.
She loved the close quarters and the nonstop personal contact, loved the sense of community and
camaraderie in pursuit of humanity’s common goal.

“How does it feel,” he suddenly asked, “to know that the lifestyle you grew up with is about to end?”

She paused with a forkful of noodles halfway to her mouth. “Is it?”

“How many people do you suppose will stay in the domes when there’s an entire planet to spread out
onto? Even if half of them stay, this place will feel deserted.”

“For a while.” She chewed and swallowed, then said, “We’ll drop the birth control laws. In a few years,
the population will go right back up.”

“You want to live in a nursery?”

She smiled. “Babies are fun.”

He wasn’t so sure of that. He’d held one once, and it was heavy, squirmy, and wet. And noisy. If people
started having more babies, he might wind up homesteading some acreage himself.

Funny to think that birth could spell the end of something else, but he supposed any change practically by
definition killed the status quo. Sound killed silence, light killed darkness, food killed hunger. When you