"John Varley - In The Bowl2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

fixed. If it was still acting up at Last Chance, then I'd see about it.

Cui-Cui was more to my liking than Venusburg. There was not such a cast-of-thousands feeling
there. On the streets of Venusburg the chances are about ten to one against meeting a real human
being; everyone else is a holo put there to spice up the image and help the streets look not quite
so empty. I quickly tired of toot-suited pimps that I could see right through trying to sell me
boys and girls of all ages. What's the point? Just try to touch one of those beautiful people.

In Cui-Cui the ratio was closer to fifty-fifty. And the theme was not decadent corruption, but
struggling frontier. The streets were very convincing mud, and the wooden storefronts were
tastefully done. I didn't care for the eight-legged dragons with eyestalks that constantly
lumbered through the place, but I understand

they are a memorial to the fellow who named the town That's all right, but I doubt if he would
have liked to have one of the damn things walk through him like a twelve-ton tank made of pixie


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dust.

I barely had time to get my feet "wet" in the "puddles" before the blimp was ready to go again.
And the eye trouble had cleared up. So I was off to Last Chance.

I should have taken a cue from the name of the town. And I had every opportunity to do so. While
there, I made my last purchase of supplies for the bush. I was going out where there were no air
stations on every corner, and so I decided I could use a tagalong.

Maybe you've never seen one. They're modern science's answer to the backpack. Or maybe to the mule
train, though in operation you're sure to be reminded of the safari bearers in old movies,
trudging stolidly along behind the White Hunter with bales of supplies on their heads. The thing
is a pair of metal legs exactly as long as your legs, with equipment on the top and an umbilical
cord attaching the contraption to your lower spine. What it does is provide you with the
capability of living on the surface for four weeks instead of the five days you get from your
Venus-lung

The medico who sold me mine had me laying right there on his table with my back laid open so he
could install the tubes that carry air from the tanks in the tagalong into my Venus-lung. It was a
golden opportunity to ask him to check the eye. He probably would have, because while he was
hooking me up he inspected and tested my lung and charged me nothing. He wanted to know where I
bought it, and I told him Mars. He clucked, and said it seemed all right: He warned me not to ever
let the level of oxygen in the lung get too low, to always charge it up before I left a pressure
dome, even if I was only going out for a few minutes. I assured him that I knew all that and would
be careful. So he connected the nerves into a metal socket in the small of my back and plugged the
tagalong into it. He tested it several ways and said the job was done.

And I didn't ask him to look at the eye. I just wasn't thinking about the eye then. I'd not even
gone out on the surface yet. So I'd no real occasion to see it in action. Oh, things looked a
little different, even in visible light. There were different colors and very few shadows, and the