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She told me about it. The last I heard, a million people had died over there. It was a whole country frothing at the mouth and snapping at anything that moved. Or like one of those sharks you read about that, when its guts are ripped out, bends in a circle and starts devouring itself.

She told me about being forced to build a pyramid of severed heads. Twenty of them working all day in the hot sun finally got it ten feet high before it collapsed. If any of them stopped working, their own heads were added to the pile.

«It didn't mean anything to me. It was just another job. I was pretty crazy by then. I didn't start to come out of it until I got across the Thai border.»

That she had survived it at all seemed a miracle. She had gone through more horror than I could imagine. And she had come through it in much better shape. It made me feel small. When I was her age, I was well on my way to building the prison I have lived in ever since. I told her that.

«Part of it is preparation,» she said, wryly. «What you expect out of life, what your life has been so far. You said it yourself. Korea was new to you. I'm not saying I was ready for Cambodia, but my life up to that point hadn't been what you'd call sheltered. I hope you haven't been thinking I made a living in the streets by selling apples.»

She kept rubbing my feet, staring off into scenes I could not see.

«How old were you when your mother died?»

«She was killed during Tet, 1968. I was ten.»

«By the Viet Cong?»

«Who knows? Lot of bullets flying, lot of grenades being thrown.»

She sighed, dropped my foot, and sat there, a scrawny Buddha without a robe.

«You ready to do it again, Yank?»

«I don't think I can, Lisa. I'm an old man.»

She moved over me and lowered herself with her chin just below my sternum, settling her breasts in the most delicious place possible.

«We'll see,» she said, and giggled. «There's an alternative sex act I'm pretty good at, and I'm pretty sure it would make you a young man again. But I haven't been able to do it for about a year on account of these.» She tapped her braces. «It'd be sort of like sticking it in a buzz saw. So now I do this instead. I call it 'touring the silicone valley.'» She started moving her body up and down, just a few inches at a time. She blinked innocently a couple times, then laughed.

«At last, I can see you,» she said. «I'm awfully myopic.»

I let her do that for a while, then lifted my head.

«Did you say silicone?»

«Uh-huh. You didn't think they were real, did you?»

I confessed that I had.

«I don't think I've ever been so happy with anything I ever bought. Not even the car.»

«Why did you?»

«Does it bother you?»

It didn't, and I told her so. But I couldn't conceal my curiosity.

«Because it was safe to. In Saigon I was always angry that I never developed. I could have made a good living as a prostitute, but I was always too tall, too skinny, and too ugly. Then in Cambodia I was lucky. I managed to pass for a boy some of the time. If not for that I'd have been raped a lot more than I was. And in Thailand I knew I'd get to the West one way or another, and when I got there, I'd get the best car there was, eat anything I wanted any time I wanted to, and purchase the best tits money could buy. You can't imagine what the West looks like from the camps. A place where you can buy tits!»

She looked down between them, then back at my face.

«Looks like it was a good investment,» she said.

«They do seem to work okay,» I had to admit.

В оригинале: «installed her at a cafeteria table in my bedroom.»

В оригинале — «king-size waterbed».

В оригинале: «Once a thief, always a thief, Victor. I told you I couldn't make ends meet selling my body.»

Пропущено: «We would soak for twenty minutes or an hour, turning the jets and bubblers on and off, washing each other; giggling like kids. Once we used bubble bath and made a mountain of suds four feet high, then destroyed it, splashing water all over the place. Most nights she let me wash her long black hair.»

Пропущено: «Two glasses of wine was her limit.

I felt like Lazarus.»

В оригинале: «She let them watch in horror as dragons leaped out of nowhere and ate up all the data on a disc, then printed „You Stupid Putz!“ on the screen.»

Пропущено: «But it's more like Dungeons and Dragons.»

В оригинале: «You looked, you looked, you dirty crook!» (грязный жулик).

Пропущено: She stood up and started to the door. I just managed to get my hand around her ankle. Then she was leaning over me again, her eyes as wide as they would go.

«What is it? What's wrong now?»

«Get some clothes on,» I told her. She looked down at herself, surprised.

«Oh. Right.»

Пропущено: «He was surely a pedophile, and probably had homosexual tendencies, since I looked so much like a skinny little boy.»

Again the wait. This time she smiled.

Пропущено: She sat beside me, making a great sloshing in the bed. «You want to be amoral again?»

«In a little bit.» She started rubbing my chest.

Восьмибитовых.

…все эти «Трэш-80», «Атари», «ТИ», «Синклеры».

Трэш-80— жаргонное название компьютера TRS-80.

TRS-80 — серия настольных микрокомпьютеров компании Tandy, которые продавались через сеть магазинов RadioShack в конце 1970-х — начале 1980-х. Целевыми потребителями системы были энтузиасты, домашние пользователи и небольшие компании. TRS-80 был хорошо воспринят пользователями, что оказалось большой удачей для Tandy Corporation. Компьютер конкурировал с Apple II и Commodore PET 2001 (журналом Byte Magazine эта тройка была названа «1977 Trinity») и удерживал высокие продажи, во многом благодаря тому, что продавался через сеть из 3000 магазинов Radio Shack. Другими его сильными сторонами были полноразмерная QWERTY-клавиатура, малый размер, хорошо написанный Floating BASIC, монитор в комплекте и цена в 599 долл. Главным недостатком TRS-80 являлись сильные радиопомехи, сказывавшиеся на стоящих рядом с компьютером электронных устройствах, что нарушало нормы FCC. Этот недостаток так и не был устранён. На 1979 год TRS-80 располагал самым широким выбором программного обеспечения на рынке микрокомпьютеров.

Комплект за 599 долл. включал в себя кассетный магнитофон. В качестве центрального процессора использовался Zilog Z80 на частоте 1.77 МГц (более поздние модели поставлялись с Z80A). Базовая модель первоначально поставлялась с 4 КБ ОЗУ, а позднее — с 16 КБ. Видеоконтроллер TRS-80 поддерживал текстовый режим с 16 строками по 64 или 32 символа на строку, и графический режим низкого разрешения 128×48 пикселей. Цвет не поддерживался. Видеопамять была отдельной и имела объём 1024×7 бит.