"Big U, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

appeared on posters all over the Plex. This was just the kind of thing
that Megaversity students regarded as a sign of greatness, so she had
won, despite progressive political ideas which, as it turned out,
nobody was even aware of. This was all hard for Sarah to believe.
She felt that Bert Nix had been elected President, not the woman he
had appeared with on the campaign poster, and she felt obliged to
listen to him even when he simply jabbered for hours on end. He was
a ntce lunatic, but he was adrift in the Bert Nix universe, and that
stirred deep fears in Sarah's soul.
Casimir paid little attention to the drunk and a great deal to
Sarah. He could not help it, because she was the first nice-seeming
person, concept or thing he had found in his six hours at the Big U.
During the ten years he had spent saving up money to attend this
school, Casimir had kept himself sane by imagining it.
Unfortunately, he had imagined quiet talks over brunch with old
professors, profound discussions in the bathrooms, and dazzling,
sensitive people everywhere just waiting to make new friends. What
he had found, of course, was American Megaversity. There was only
one explanation for this atmosphere that he was willing to believe:
that these people were civilized, and that for amusement they
were acting out a parody of the squalor of high school life, which
parody Casimir had been too slow to get so far. The obvious
explanation—that it was really this way—was so horrible that it had
not even entered his mind.
When he saw the photo of her on the back page of the back-to-
school edition of the Monoplex Monitor, and read the caption
identifying her as Sarah Jane Johnson, Student Government
President, he made the most loutish double take between her and the
photograph. He knew that she knew that he now knew who she was,
and that was no way to start a passionate love affair. All he could do
was to make a big show of reading about her in the Monitor, and
wait for her to make the first move. He nodded thoughtfully at the
botched quotations and oversimplifications in the article.
Sarah was aware of this; she had watched him page slowly and
intensely through the paper, waiting with mild dread for him to get
to the back page, see the picture and say something embarrassing.
Instead—even more embarrassing
—he actually read the article, and before he reached the bottom
of the page, the student ahead of Sarah stomped out and she found
herself impaled on the azure gaze of the chief bureaucrat of the
College of Sciences and Humanities. "How," said Mrs. Santucci
crisply, "may I help you?"
Mrs. Santucci was polite. Her determination to be decent, and to
make all things decent, was like that of all the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards combined. Her policy of no-first-use meant that as long as
we were objective and polite, any conversation would slide
pleasantly down greased iron rails into a pit of despair. Any first
strike by us, any remarks deemed improper by this grandmother of
twenty-six and player of two dozen simultaneous bingo cards, would
bring down massive retaliation. Sarah knew her. She arose primly