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

She looked around the shop with great interest, brown ponytail twitching. "Where you hail
from?" Lyle asked her. He had already forgotten her name.
"Well, I'm originally from Juneau, Alaska."
"Canadian, huh? Great. Welcome to Tennessee."
"Actually, Alaska used to be part of the United States."
"You're kidding," Lyle said. "Hey, I'm no historian, but I've seen Alaska on a map before."
"You've got a whole working shop and everything built inside this old place! That's really
something, Mr. Schweik. What's behind that curtain?"
"The spare room," Lyle said. "That's where my roommate used to stay."
She glanced up. "Dertouzas?"
"Yeah, him."
"Who's in there now?"
"Nobody," Lyle said sadly. "I got some storage stuff in there."
She nodded slowly, and kept looking around, apparently galvanized with curiosity. "What are
you running on that screen?"
"Hard to say, really," Lyle said. He crossed the room, bent down and switched off the set-top
box. "Some kind of weird political crap."
He began examining her bike. All its serial numbers had been removed. Typical zone bike.
"The first thing we got to do," he said briskly, "is fit it to you properly: set the saddle height,
pedal stroke, and handlebars. Then I'll adjust the tension, true the wheels, check the brakepads
and suspension valves, tune the shifting, and lubricate the drive-train. The usual. You're gonna
need a better saddle than this -- this saddle's for a male pelvis." He looked up. "You got a charge
card?"
She nodded, then frowned. "But I don't have much credit left."
"No problem." He flipped open a dog-eared catalog. "This is what you need. Any halfway
decent gel-saddle. Pick one you like, and we can have it shipped in by tomorrow morning. And
then" -- he flipped pages -- "order me one of these."
She stepped closer and examined the page. "The 'cotterless crank-bolt ceramic wrench set,' is
that it?"
"That's right. I fix your bike, you give me those tools, and we're even."
"Okay. Sure. That's cheap!" She smiled at him. "I like the way you do business, Lyle."
"You'll get used to barter, if you stay in the zone long enough."
"I've never lived in a squat before," she said thoughtfully. "I like the attitude here, but people
say that squats are pretty dangerous."
"I dunno about the squats in other towns, but Chattanooga squats aren't dangerous, unless you
think anarchists are dangerous, and anarchists aren't dangerous unless they're really drunk." Lyle
shrugged. "People will steal your stuff all the time, that's about the worst part. There's a couple of
tough guys around here who claim they have handguns. I never saw anybody actually use a
handgun. Old guns aren't hard to find, but it takes a real chemist to make working ammo
nowadays." He smiled back at her. "Anyway, you look to me like you can take care of yourself."
"I take dance classes."
Lyle nodded. He opened a drawer and pulled a tape measure.
"I saw all those cables and pulleys you have on top of this place. You can pull the whole
building right up off the ground, huh? Kind of hang it right off the ceiling up there."
 "That's right, it saves a lot of trouble with people breaking and entering." Lyle glanced at his
shock-baton, in its mounting at the door. She followed his gaze to the weapon and then looked at
him, impressed.
Lyle measured her arms, torso length, then knelt and measured her inseam from crotch to
floor. He took notes. "Okay," he said. "Come by tomorrow afternoon."
"Lyle?"