《Little Cat Laughed To See Such Sport》作者： - Michael Swanwick【EPUB】

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The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport by Michael Swanwick There was a season in Paris when Darger and Surplus, those two canny rogues, lived very well indeed. That was the year when the Seine shone a gentle green at night with the pillars of the stone bridges fading up into a pure and ghostly blue, for the city engineers, in obedience to the latest fashions, had made the algae and mosses bioluminescent. Paris, unlike lesser cities, reveled in her flaws. The molds and funguses that attacked her substance had been redesigned for beauty. The rats had been displaced by a breed of particularly engaging mice. A depleted revenant of the Plague Wars yet lingered in her brothels in the form of a sexual fever that lasted but twenty-four hours before dying away, leaving one with only memories and pleasant regrets. The health service, needless to say, made no serious effort to eradicate it. Small wonder that Darger and Surplus were as happy as two such men could be. One such man, actually. Surplus was, genetically, a dog, though he had been remade into anthropomorphic form and intellect. But neither that nor his American origins was held against him, for it was widely believed that he was enormously wealthy. He was not, of course. Nor was he, as so many had been led to suspect, a Baron of the Demesne of Western Vermont, traveling incognito in his government’s service. In actual fact, Surplus and Darger were being kept afloat by an immense sea of credit while their plans matured. "It seems almost a pity," Surplus remarked conversationally over breakfast one morning, "that our little game must soon come to fruition." He cut a slice of strawberry, laid it down upon his