"John Varley - Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

flatulent, yet engaging tones of a bass saxophone in a honky-tonk tune that neither of them could identify.
They shifted position and could just make out the location of Pearly Gates, the only human settlement on
Janus. It was easy to find because of the weaving, floating musical staffs that extruded themselves from
the spot like parallel strands of spider web.

The people who ran Pearly Gates were a barrel of laughs. All the actual structures that made up the
above-ground parts of the settlement were disguised behind whimsical holographic projections. The
whole place looked like a cross between a child's candy-land nightmare and an early Walt Disney
cartoon.

Dominating the town was a giant calliope with pipes a thousand meters tall. There were fifteen of them,
and they were all bouncing and swaying in time to the saxophone music. They would squat down as if
taking a deep breath, then stand up again, emitting a colored smoke ring. The buildings, which Barnum
knew were actually functional, uninteresting hemispheres, appeared to be square houses with flower
boxes in the windows and cartoon eyes peering out the doors. They trembled and jigged as if they were
made of jello.

"Don't you think it's a trifle overdone?" Bailey asked.

"Depends on what you like. It's kind of cute, in its own gaudy way."

They drifted in through the spaghetti maze of lines, bars, sixteenth notes, rests, smoke rings, and blaring
music. They plowed through an insubstantial eighth-note run, and Bailey killed their remaining velocity
with the jets. They lighted softly in the barely perceptible gravity and made their way to one of the
grinning buildings.

Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance 197

Coming up to the entrance of the building had been quite an experience. Barnum had reached for a
button marked LOCK CYCLE and it had dodged out of his way, then turned into a tiny face, leering at
him. Practical joke. The lock had opened anyway, actuated by his presence. Inside, Pearly Gates was
not so flamboyant. The corridors looked decently like corridors, and the floors were solid and gray.

"I'd watch out, all the same," Bailey advised, darkly. "These people are real self-panickers. Their idea of
a good laugh might be to dig a hole in the floor and cover it with a holo. Watch your step."

"Aw, don't be such a sore loser. You could spot something like that, couldn't you?"

Bailey didn't answer, and Barnum didn't pursue it. He knew the source of the symb's uneasiness and
dislike of the station on Janus. Bailey wanted to get their business over as soon as possible and get back
to the Ring, where he felt needed. Here, in a corridor filled with oxygen, Bailey was physically useless.

Bailey's function in the symbiotic team of Barnum and Bailey was to provide an environment of food,
oxygen, and water for the human, Barnum. Conversely, Barnum provided food, carbon dioxide, and
water for Bailey. Barnum was a human, physically unremarkable except for a surgical alteration of his
knees that made them bend outward rather than forward, and the oversized hands, called peds, that grew
out of his ankles where his feet used to be. Bailey, on the other hand, was nothing like a human.

Strictly speaking, Bailey was not even a he. Bailey was a plant, and Barnum thought of him as a male
only because the voice in Barnum's head—Bailey's only means of communication—sounded masculine.