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Пропущено:

«and Lisa leaned back. I glanced at her screen. It said: osculate posterior-p. I remembered that osculate meant kiss. Well, these people have their own language. Lisa looked up at me and grinned.

„Not you,“ she said, quietly. „Him.“

I hadn't the faintest notion of what she was talking about.»

В оригинале: «I had the computer list the program.»

Компьютер TI-99/4A поставлялся с языком программирования Бэйсик — TI BASIC. Команда LIST — в Бэйсике — вывод на экран кода программы.

В оригинале: «It's tighter'n a bug's ass.»

В оригинале: «But it means… a Rube Goldberg device.»

Рубен Люциус Голдберг(англ. Reuben Lucius Goldberg; 4 июля 1883 — 7 декабря 1970) — американский карикатурист, скульптор, писатель, инженер и изобретатель.

Голдберг более всего известен серией карикатур, в которых фигурирует так называемая «машина Руба Голдберга» — чрезвычайно сложное, громоздкое и запутанное устройство, выполняющее очень простые функции (например, огромная машина, занимающая целую комнату, цель которой — передвижение ложки с пищей от тарелки до рта человека).

(Вики)

В оригинале: «You 'kluge around' bugs in a program. It's the hacker's vaseline.»

В оригинале: «She was wearing a new T-shirt. There was a big V, and under it a picture of a screw, followed by a hyphen and a small case „p.“ I thought it over as she babbled on. V, screw-p.»

Пропущено: Toward the end, I broke down halfway.

«Does the V stand for victory?» I asked.

«Maybe.»

«Beethoven? Churchill? World War Two?»

She just smiled.

«Think of it as a challenge, Yank.»

Пропущено: «I have the same problem,» she said.

«Fear of Orientals?» I had meant it as a joke.

«Of Cambodians.» She let me take that in for a while, then went on. «When Saigon fell, I fled to Cambodia. It took me two years with stops when the Khmer Rouge put me in labor camps. I'm lucky to be alive, really.»

«I thought they called it Kampuchea now.»

She spat. I'm not even sure she was aware she had done it.

«It's the People's Republic of Syphilitic Dogs. The North Koreans treated you very badly, didn't they, Victor?»

«That's right.»

«Koreans are pus suckers.» I must have looked surprised, because she chuckled.

В оригинале: «When in fact Orientals are among the most racist peoples on the earth.»

Затем пропущено: «The Vietnamese have hated the Cambodians for a thousand years. The Chinese hate the Japanese. The Koreans hate everybody. And everybody hates the 'ethnic Chinese.' The Chinese are the Jews of the east.»

«I've heard that.»

В оригинале — «telephone modem».

В оригинале — Bubble Sorter.

Bubble sort— Сортировка простыми обменами, сортировка пузырьком — простой алгоритм сортировки. Для понимания и реализации этот алгоритм — простейший, но эффективен он лишь для небольших массивов.

(Вики)

В оригинале: «At the end, Bubble Sorter wrote „bye-p.“ Lisa typed T.»

T = True

Пропущено: «I thought that over.

„So how would you translate 'osculate posterior-p'?“

„'You wanna kiss my ass?' But remember, that was for Osborne.“»

В оригинале: «Intercourse-p.»

Пропущено: We made love in Kluge's big waterbed.

I had a certain amount of performance anxiety-it had been a long, long time. After that, I was so caught up in the touch and smell and taste of her that I went a little crazy. She didn't seem to mind.

At last we were done, and bathed in sweat. She rolled over, stood, and went to the window. She opened it, and a breath of air blew over me. Then she put one knee on the bed, leaned over me, and got a pack of cigarettes from the bedside table. She lit one.

«I hope you're not allergic to smoke,» she said.

«No. My father smoked. But I didn't know you did.»

«Only afterwards,» she said, with a quick smile. She took a deep drag. «Everybody in Saigon smoked, I think.» She stretched out on her back beside me and we lay like that, soaking wet, holding hands. She opened her legs so one of her bare feet touched mine. It seemed enough contact. I watched the smoke rise from her right hand.

«I haven't felt warm in thirty years,» I said. «I've been hot, but I've never been warm. I feel warm now.»

«Tell me about it,» she said.

So I did, as much as I could, wondering if it would work this time. At thirty years remove, my story does not sound so horrible. We've seen so much in that time. There were people in jails at that very moment, enduring conditions as bad as any I encountered. The paraphernalia of oppression is still pretty much the same. Nothing physical happened to me that would account for thirty years lived as a recluse.

«I was badly injured,» I told her. «My skull was fractured, I still have… problems from that. Korea can get very cold, and I was never warm enough. But it was the other stuff. What they call brainwashing now.»

«We didn't know what it was. We couldn't understand that even after a man had told them all he knew they'd keep on at us. Keeping us awake. Disorienting us. Some guys signed confessions, made up all sorts of stuff, but even that wasn't enough. They'd just keep on at you.»

«I never did figure it out. I guess I couldn't understand an evil that big. But when they were sending us back and some of the prisoners wouldn't go… they really didn't want to go, they really believed…»

I had to pause there. Lisa sat up, moved quietly to the end of the bed, and began massaging my feet.

«We got a taste of what the Vietnam guys got, later. Only for us it was reversed. The GJ.'s were heroes, and the prisoners were…»

«You didn't break,» she said. It wasn't a question.

«No, I didn't.»

«That would be worse.»

I looked at her. She had my foot pressed against her flat belly, holding me by the heel while her other hand massaged my toes.

«The country was shocked,» I said. «They didn't understand what brainwashing was. I tried telling people how it was. I thought they were looking at me funny. After a while, I stopped talking about it. And I didn't have anything else to talk about.»

«A few years back the Army changed its policy. Now they don't expect you to withstand psychological conditioning. It's understood you can say anything or sign anything.»

She just looked at me, kept massaging my foot, and nodded slowly. Finally she spoke.

«Cambodia was hot,» she said. «I kept telling myself when I finally got to the U.S. I'd live in Maine or someplace, where it snowed. And I did go to Cambridge, but I found out I didn't like snow.»