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

"He's been working really hard on the regional accents," commented the text. "Not bad for a
guy from Minnesota. But look at that sloppy, incompetent camera work! Doesn't anybody care
anymore? What on earth is happening to our standards?"
By lunchtime, Lyle had the final coat down on the enameling job. He ate a bowl of triticale
mush and chewed up a mineral-rich handful of iodized sponge.
Then he settled down in front of the wallscreen to work on the inertia brake. Lyle knew there
was big money in the inertia brake -- for somebody, somewhere, sometime. The device smelled
like the future.
Lyle tucked a jeweler's loupe in one eye and toyed methodically with the brake. He loved the
way the piezoplastic clamp and rim transmuted braking energy into electrical battery storage. At
last, a way to capture the energy you lost in braking and put it to solid use. It was almost, but not
quite, magical.
The way Lyle figured it, there was gonna be a big market someday for an inertia brake that
captured energy and then fed it back through the chaindrive in a way that just felt like human
pedaling energy, in a direct and intuitive and muscular way, not chunky and buzzy like some
loser battery-powered moped. If the system worked out right, it would make the rider feel
completely natural and yet subtly superhuman at the same time. And it had to be simple, the kind
of system a shop guy could fix with hand tools. It wouldn't work if it was too brittle and fancy, it
just wouldn't feel like an authentic bike.
Lyle had a lot of ideas about the design. He was pretty sure he could get a real grip on the
problem, if only he weren't being worked to death just keeping the shop going. If he could get
enough capital together to assemble the prototypes and do some serious field tests.
It would have to be chip-driven, of course, but true to the biking spirit at the same time. A lot
of bikes had chips in them nowadays, in the shocks or the braking or in reactive hubs, but
bicycles simply weren't like computers. Computers were black boxes inside, no big visible
working parts. People, by contrast, got sentimental about their bike gear. People were strangely
reticent and traditional about bikes. That's why the bike market had never really gone for
recumbents, even though the recumbent design had a big mechanical advantage. People didn't
like their bikes too complicated. They didn't want bicycles to bitch and complain and whine for
attention and constant upgrading the way that computers did. Bikes were too personal. People
wanted their bikes to wear.
Someone banged at the shop door.
Lyle opened it. Down on the tiling by the barrels stood a tall brunette woman in stretch shorts,
with a short-sleeve blue pullover and a ponytail. She had a bike under one arm, an old lacquer-
and-paper-framed Taiwanese job. "Are you Edward Dertouzas?" she said, gazing up at him.
"No," Lyle said patiently. "Eddy's in Europe."
She thought this over. "I'm new in the zone," she confessed. "Can you fix this bike for me? I
just bought it secondhand and I think it kinda needs some work."
"Sure," Lyle said. "You came to the right guy for that job, ma'am, because Eddy Dertouzas
couldn't fix a bike for hell. Eddy just used to live here. I'm the guy who actually owns this shop.
Hand the bike up."
Lyle crouched down, got a grip on the handlebar stem and hauled the bike into the shop. The
woman gazed up at him respectfully. "What's your name?"
"Lyle Schweik."
"I'm Kitty Casaday." She hesitated. "Could I come up inside there?"
Lyle reached down, gripped her muscular wrist, and hauled her up into the shop. She wasn't
all that good looking, but she was in really good shape -- like a mountain biker or triathlon
runner. She looked about thirty-five. It was hard to tell, exactly. Once people got into cosmetic
surgery and serious bio-maintenance, it got pretty hard to judge their age. Unless you got a good,
close medical exam of their eyelids and cuticles and internal membranes and such.