"John Varley - GoodBye, Robinson Crusoe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

GOOD-BYE, ROBINSON CRUSOE
by John Varley

John Varley wrote all through high school, he tells us, stopped when he got out,
and took it up again in 1973. Now, reading, writing, and imagining take up all of
his spare time. This story is the 19th of the 20 that he’s written—and sold—so far.
(We bought number 20 too.) He’s now working on a novel, Ophiuchi Hotline, for
Don Bensen at Dial Press.




It was summer and Piri was in his second childhood. First, second; who counted?
His body was young. He had not felt more alive since his original childhood back in
the spring, when the sun drew closer and the air began to melt.

He was spending his time at Rarotonga Reef, in the Pacifica disneyland.
Pacifica was still under construction, but Rarotonga had been used by the ecologists
as a testing ground for the more ambitious barrier-type reef they were building in the
south, just off the “Australian” coast. As a result, it was more firmly established than
the other biomes. It was open to visitors, but so far only Piri was there. The “sky”
disconcerted everyone else.

Piri didn’t mind it. He was equipped with a brand-new toy: a fully operational
imagination, a selective sense of wonder that allowed him to blank out those parts of
his surroundings that failed to fit with his current fantasy.

He awoke with the tropical sun blinking in his face through the palm fronds.
He had built a rude shelter from flotsam and detritus on the beach. It was not to
protect him from the elements. The disneyland management had the weather well in
hand; he might as well have slept in the open. But castaways always build some sort
of shelter.

He bounced up with the quick alertness that comes from being young and
living close to the center of things, brushed sand from his naked body, and ran for
the line of breakers at the bottom of the narrow strip of beach.

His gait was awkward. His feet were twice as long as they should have been,
with flexible toes that were webbed into flippers. Dry sand showered around his legs
as he ran. He was brown as coffee and cream, and hairless.

Piri dived flat to the water, sliced neatly under a wave, and paddled out to
waist-height. He paused there. He held his nose and worked his arms up and down,
blowing air through his mouth and swallowing at the same time. What looked like
long, hairline scars between his lower ribs came open. Red-orange fringes became
visible inside them, and gradually lowered. He was no longer an air-breather.

He dived again, mouth open, and this time he did not come up. His esophagus
and trachea closed and a new valve came into operation. It would pass water in only
one direction, so his diaphragm now functioned as a pump pulling water through his