"Mack Reynolds - Tomorrow Might Be Different" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

Mike stood, up next to the suffering driver.-He had tried to wiggle into the seat next to Catherina
Saratov but had missed out to a hulking Russkie pushing seven feet in height who looked more like a
Turk than a Slav. A really brawny specimen, with shaved head, he must have gone almost 300 pounds.
He had a ring of lard around the back of his neck, but he was far from fat otherwise. Now he had a
magnum of champagne in one hand, a pair of castanets in the other. He was regaling all with a
Russianized version of gypsy flamenco which made Mike inwardly wince-he was a flamenco lover, but
was joyously received by the other's fellow countrymen, including Catherina.

One of the Russkies leaned far out a window and pointed excitedly. "Look, a car with wheels. Four
wheels. How quaint. Look everybody!" She whipped up her camera for a shot and so did a dozen of the
others.

Mike closed his eyes in pain.

Ana Chekova, the woman who had been with Catherina on the beach the day before, demanded of
Mike, "Why do they still use land cars here? In the Soviet Complex, everyone uses aircushion cars.
Automated air-cushion cars. Much more comfortable and much safer. It's ridiculous to use wheel cars.
And here in Spain the roads are not even automated. Very dangerous."

Mike cleared his throat. "Well, in some countries, such as Spain, they haven't yet got around to acquiring
aircushion cars the way you have in the Soviet Complex. Sometimes they can't afford to buy a new one.
As a matter of fact, some people prefer them-in a way."

"Ha!" Ana Chekova snorted.

Mike shrugged. It was a Russkie characteristic that they couldn't believe everybody wouldn't adopt each
and every Russian gadget, given the chance. He didn't know it but it was a characteristic his own people
were famous for a few decades earlier.

When he had first come to Spain, Mike Edwards had rather liked the bullfight. In theory, he was morally
opposed to it. In practice it gave him a vicarious thrill he'd never found in any other spectator sport-if you
could call it a sport, and purists didn't. Since the coming of the Russkie tourist wave, however, something
was lost. The pageant, the excitement of the knowledgeable aficionado, the electric feeling of the fiesta
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brava was gone. Now the stands were packed with first comers, more occupied with their bottles and
their 3-D cameras, uncaring about the niceties of the spectacle going on below them.

Mike had arranged it this time. His seat was next to Catherina's and right at the edge of the barrera. As a
matter of fact, he was rather keen to see the mono a mano competition between Segura and Arruza.
Also, he was trying to analyze this feeling he had developed for the Russkie girl. This was new-especially
in season. He grinned wryly to himself. Was it because she was such an exception? A girl who wasn't
wildly pursuing. There was a preponderance of female over male tourists of two to one in Torremolinos
and usually it was all a thirty year old tourist agent could do to fight them off. They all seemed to act like
bitches in heat. More than once he had returned to his room to find a nude woman in his bed, patiently
waiting. How they got in he never knew.