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

Bailey had no shape of his own. He existed by containing Barnum and taking on part of his shape. He
extended into Barnum's alimentary canal, in the mouth and all the way through to emerge at the anus,
threading him like a needle. Together, the team looked like a human in a featureless spacesuit, with a
bulbous head, a tight waist, and swollen hips. A ridiculously exaggerated female, if you wish.

198 John Varley
"You might as well start breathing again," Bailey said.

"What for? I will when I need to talk to someone who's not paired with a symb. In the meantime, why
bother?"

"I just thought you'd like to get used to it."

"Oh, very well. If you think it's necessary."

So Bailey gradually withdrew the parts of him that filled Barnum's lungs and throat, freeing his speech
apparatus to do what it hadn't done for over ten years. Barnum coughed as the air flowed into his throat.
It was cold! Well, it felt like it, though it was actually at the standard seventy-two degrees. He was
unused to it. His diaphragm gave one shudder then took over the chore of breathing as if his medulla had
never been disconnected.

"There," he said aloud, surprised at how his voice sounded. "Satisfied?"

"It never hurts to do a little testing."

"Let's get this out in the open, shall we? I didn't want to come here any more than you did, but you know
we had to. Are you going to give me trouble about it until we leave? We're supposed to be a team,
remember?"

There was a sigh from his partner.

"I'm sorry, but that's just it. We are supposed to be a team, and out in the Ring we are. Neither of us is
anything without the other. Here I'm just something you have to carry around. I can't walk, I can't talk;
I'm revealed as the vegetable that I am."

Barnum was accustomed to the symb's periodic attacks of insecurity. In the Ring they never amounted to
much. But when they entered a gravitational field Bailey was reminded of how ineffectual a being he was.

"Here you can breathe on your own," Bailey went on. "You could see on your own if I uncovered your
eyes. By the way, do you—"

"Don't be silly. Why should I use my own eyes when you can give me a better picture than I could on my
own?"

"In the Ring, that's true. But here all my extra senses are just excess mass. What good is an adjusted
velocity display to you here, where the farthest thing I can sense is twenty meters off, and stationary?"

Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance 199

"Listen, you. Do you want to turn around and march back out that lock? We can. I'll do it if this is going