（外文电子版资料）Pat Cadigan - Johnny Come Home.pdf

PAT CADIGAN JOHNNY COME HOME There was nothing for me to do in Moscow but drink. Well, that and look for Johnny, and I no longer really had to do that. The Sense told me he was in the city, eventually our paths would cross and I would reel him in. But until that happened, I had to do something and drinking was it. Bars as Westerners know them were still relatively new in Moscow. Most of them little more than empty storefronts with the bare essentials; if you wanted atmosphere, you brought it with you. Or, if you were an especially wealthy tourist, you could go to one of the headjob parlors, where they gave you a happy-hood and a couple of gloves so you could enjoy your Stoli in whatever virtual environment they were running that night--provided, of course, youd made your reservation the required six to eight months in advance. I figured it was artificial reality either way and not being an especially wealthy tourist, I opted for the austerity plan. Besides, in Moscow, it was the booze that carried importance, not the place where you drank it, and Stoli seemed to have a deeper understanding of the drinking organism. It certainly understood `me--besides being mellow and friendly, it had the salutary effect of enhancing the Sense. The bad news was that sobering up dulled me, but that was easy enough to take care of. So there I was, boozing and cruising in Moscow. They all envied me back home--my turn to fetch Johnny and I got to go to Russia to do it. First time Id ever been off the North American continent, too. But heres a little home truth for you (and why not home truth, seeing as how weve had the awful truth, nothing but the truth, and cheap truth, God help us each and every one): One place is pretty much like another, and once I understood what I could do in Moscow, I might have been anywhere, the language difference notwithstanding. Even now--or maybe especially now, in the last weeks before the millennium turned. Well, not a full tu