"Bruce Sterling - Bicycle Repairman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

"Yeah?" He stood up.
"Do you rent this place out? I really need a safe place to stay in the zone."
"I'm sorry," Lyle said politely, "but I hate landlords and I'd never be one. What I need is a
roommate who can really get behind the whole concept of my shop. Someone who's qualified,
you know, to develop my infrastructure or do bicycle work. Anyway, if I took your cash or
charged you for rent, then the tax people would just have another excuse to harass me."
"Sure, okay, but..." She paused, then looked at him under lowered eyelids. "I've gotta be a lot
better than having this place go empty."
Lyle stared at her, astonished.
"I'm a pretty useful woman to have around, Lyle. Nobody's ever complained before."
"Really?"
"That's right." She stared at him boldly.
"I'll think about your offer," Lyle said. "What did you say your name was?"
"I'm Kitty. Kitty Casaday."
"Kitty, I got a whole lot of work to do today, but I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"Okay, Lyle." She smiled. "You think about me, all right?"
Lyle helped her down out of the shop. He watched her stride away across the atrium until she
vanished through the crowded doorway of the Crowbar, a squat coffeeshop. Then he called his
mother.
"Did you forget something?" his mother said, looking up from her workscreen.
"Mom, I know this is really hard to believe, but a strange woman just banged on my door and
offered to have sex with me."
"You're kidding, right?"
"In exchange for room and board, I think. Anyway, I said you'd be the first to know if it
happened."
"Lyle--" His mother hesitated. "Lyle, I think you better come right home. Let's make that
dinner date for tonight, okay? We'll have a little talk about this situation."
"Yeah, okay. I got an enameling job I gotta deliver to Floor 41, anyway."
"I don't have a positive feeling about this development, Lyle."
"That's okay, Mom. I'll see you tonight."
 Lyle reassembled the newly enameled bike. Then he set the flywheel onto remote, and stepped
outside the shop. He mounted the bike, and touched a password into the remote control. The shop
faithfully reeled itself far out of reach and hung there in space below the fire-blackened ceiling,
swaying gently.
Lyle pedaled away, back toward the elevators, back toward the neighborhood where he'd
grown up.
He delivered the bike to the delighted young idiot who'd commissioned it, stuffed the cash in
his shoes, and then went down to his mother's. He took a shower, shaved, and shampooed
thoroughly. They had pork chops and grits and got drunk together. His mother complained about
the breakup with her third husband and wept bitterly, but not as much as usual when this topic
came up. Lyle got the strong impression she was thoroughly on the mend and would be angling
for number four in pretty short order.
Around midnight, Lyle refused his mother's ritual offers of new clothes and fresh leftovers,
and headed back down to the zone. He was still a little clubfooted from his mother's sherry, and
he stood breathing beside the broken glass of the atrium wall, gazing out at the city-smeared
summer stars. The cavernous darkness inside the zone at night was one of his favorite things
about the place. The queasy 24-hour security lighting in the rest of the Archiplat had never been
rebuilt inside the zone.
The zone always got livelier at night when all the normal people started sneaking in to cruise
the zone's unlicensed dives and nightspots, but all that activity took place behind discreetly