"Walter Jon Williams - Surfacing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

outside. Four hours. A four-hour fight!” “Why have a fight with something you can’t eat?” Anthony said.


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2




The man looked at him. He looked maybe twenty, but Anthony could tell he was old, centuries old
maybe. Old and vain and stupid, stupid as a boy. “It’s a game fish,” the man said.

Anthony looked into the fisherman’s eyes and saw a reflection of his own contempt. “You wanna fight,”
he said, “you wanna have a game, fight something smart. Not a dumb animal that you can outsmart, that
once you catch it will only rot and stink.”

That was the start.

Once it began, it didn’t take long. The man’s rings cut Anthony’s face, and Anthony was smaller and
lighter, but the man telegraphed every move and kept leading with his right. When it was over, Anthony
left him on the floor and stepped out into the downpour, stood alone in the hammering rain and let the
water wash the blood from his face. The whiskey and the rage were a flame that licked his nerves and
made them sing.

He began walking down the street. Heading for another bar.

GRACE(2) meant grace in the sense of physical grace, dexterity, harmony of motion, as opposed to
spiritual grace, which was GRACE(1). The Dweller that Anthony was listening to was engaged in a
dialogue with another, possibly the same known to the computer as 41, who might be named “Upwelling
Reflection,” but Deep Dweller naming systems seemed inconsistent, depending largely on a context that
was as yet opaque, and “upwelling reflection” might have to do with something else entirely.

Anthony suspected the Dweller had just said hello.

Salt water smarted on the cuts on Anthony’s face. His swollen knuckles

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Walter Jon Williams

pained him as he tapped the keys of his computer deck. He never suffered from hangover, and his mind