"Ball, Margaret - Shadow Gate, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ball Margaret)

"Hypnotic," Lisa said. She reached out to close the book, carefully averting her gaze from that enchanted glade where the stream ran forever clear and pure. "Mahluli said addictive, like drugs, but I don't think that's quite right, do you?"
Judith shook her head briskly as if clearing away imaginary clouds. "They're something, anyway. I don't know just what, and I'm not sure I want to know. I'll leave that spiritual jazz to youЧssh. I think the Team Player is about to visit us. Are you ready yet to tell him to go to hell, orЧoh, all right; use the old staircase door. I think you'd better have a few asser-tiveness training classes before you meet Dear Clifford again."
"A few what?"
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Judith sighed. "One of these days I really must bring you into the twentieth century."
"Don't bother," Lisa said. "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." She slipped through the back staircase door as Cliff knocked, silently blessing the eccentric makers of eccentric old houses who'd put doors and closets and servants' staircases everywhere.
The only trouble was, the back staircase had been used as a storage room for so long that Lisa didn't think she could get up the stairs without dislodging something. She would just have to wait amid the clutter until Cliff went away.
At least she could make a place to sit down. Two dozen copies of Mysteries of Ancient Egypt were piled on a stack of white terry robes that had been left behind when the Women's Self Defense and Meditation Clinic vacated the basement. Lisa carefully moved the books and sat down on the pile of robes, transmitting a mental thank-you to the two girls who'd run the clinic. Like most of Miss Penny's tenants, they were lavish in offers of free classes to make up for unpaid rent; the difference was that they'd actually had a skill worth teaching, and Lisa had thoroughly enjoyed the series of classes she took before they went out of business entirely. Now the robesЧleft behind in lieu of the last two months' rentЧwere gathering dust, and the basement was occupied by an acupuncture clinic whose offers of free treatment Lisa determinedly turned down.
Lisa leaned back and dislodged a stack of cardboard boxes containing flyers for some long-defunct program. She dived to catch the slithering pile and almost succeeded; the noises were limited to one scarcely audible squeak of alarm, one thump as her elbow collided with the staircase wall and the rustle of the last set of flyers skating down the stairs.
"What was that?" Clifford's heavy voice demanded.
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"Mice, I expect," Judith said calmly. "The house is riddled with them, hadn't you noticed? Ever since the foundation shifted and left those cracks in the walls we've had mice and scorpions coming in. You can hear the mice squeaking in the attic if you listen. Aunt Penny would like to get it fixed, of course, but she's never been able to raise the moneyЧand there's the plumbing leak, too; you know those pretty green butterflies we have all over the place? The inspector said they're attracted to leaking sewage and the city will be serving us a notice about it soon. Of course if you buy the place you'll be able to get all those little things fixed; the work shouldn't cost more than fifty or sixty thousand."
"Ah, well, a few little repairs should be no problem," said Clifford. "I was really looking for Lisa."
"Poor girl, she wasn't feeling at ail well," said Judith. "You can see that she wasn't able to do anything for me either." There was a pause, presumably while Judith pointed out the blank computer screen. "I told her that she'd better go home and rest."
"Where does she live? IЧas it happens, I was just on my way out. I'd be happy to give her a ride."
"Oh, not far from here, I think, and anyway she's already gone. But if you're leaving nowЧso soon? do let me show you out; Aunt Penny will be so sorry she couldn't chat with you today, but you know how it is ..."
Judith's loud, cheerful voice faded away into the long hall, and Lisa crept out of her dusty hiding place. A moment later she heard the thud of the heavy front door swinging shut, and then Judith returned, dusting her hands with the air of a housewife who's just disposed of a dead lizard. "We really ought to change the locks," she said as she came in, "Clifford is worse than an army of mice. Anyway, having just announced he was leaving, he had no
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alternative but to get into his car and drive away while I stood on the front porch and watched him out. It would be a BMW, wouldn't you know?"
"What would be what?"
"His car. It's a yuppiemobile," Judith translated. "I know you don't drive, Lisa, but haven't you ever noticed those large steel boxes on wheels that roll around our streets? Like the one that almost killed you this morning? A BMW is a very expensive variety of the same, suitable for men who wear gold pinkie rings. And I think we've established that he wants the house so he can tear it down, not so that he can take over the Center. Anybody who wanted to buy this place for honest purposes would have turned white when I fed him that line about the mice in the attic and the sewage leak in the foundation, don't you think?"
"You nearly convinced me," Lisa told her, "and I know there aren't mice in the atticЧI live up there."
"My God," Judith said, "I was right. You really are a medieval serf. No wonder Aunt Penny can always count on you to open up the house for late classes; you can't get away from this place."
**I like it here," Lisa said.
Judith sighed. "Yes, I know, butЧoh, never mind; 111 have to put off saving your soul until we've saved Aunt Penny's house and business. It's about time you got here, Nicholas. I never would have guessed you could take twenty-four hours getting from Brownsville to Austin."
Lisa spun round. She hadn't heard the front door opening and closing or the steps coming down the hall. The man who stood in the doorway was as large as Clifford Simmons, but he must have been incredibly light-footed to have moved with such silence through the creaky old house. And he didn't look a tiling like Judith. He wore a dark suit, impeccably businesslike and anonymous, instead of faded jeans
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and a black and silver Grateful Dead T-shirt; his hair was black instead of bright yellow, combed neatly instead of frizzing out around an inadequate ponytail holder; and his cold blue eyes looked through and past Lisa in a way that made her feel as if she wasn't really there at all.
"Neither would I," Nick said. "I had a few small items of business to take care of for my Brownsville clients before I could leave."
Judith squealed in pretended delight and threw her arms round Nick. "Oh, my little brother has some real live clients I At last! I can't believe it!"
A little of the frosty look came out of Nick's eyes and he bent to lass his sister on the top of her frizzy ponytail. "Do you think by the time we're sixty you will be able to stop patronizing me?"
Judith pretended to think. "Depends. You going to be a real grown-up by then?"
"Look," Nick said indignantly. He spun round, arms extended, and Lisa ducked out of the way. "I'm wearing a real suit. I have real clients. I'm a real lawyer. And if you didn't believe in my capabilities, why didn't you hire some local shyster and save me the trip?"
"I prefer my own personal shyster," Judith said, "the local lawyers won't work for free. And I never said you weren't a smart lad. Now sit down and let me explain the problem."
"Is this a general meeting?" Nick asked, looking at Lisa. "Or is this young lady part of the problem?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I haven't introduced you. Lisa, you must have guessed that this is my rotten kid brother. Nick, Lisa is the mainstay of the Center and the prop of Miss Penny's declining years. She keeps all the Center's vital data in a magical unicorn notebook, and if you offend her, she'll look cross-eyed at her desk drawer and the notebook will automatically lock itself away and the telephone will stop working."
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"Very impressive," Nick drawled. "I gather that means she's supposed to be sitting at the front desk, keeping suspicious characters from prowling through the building. Right now anybody could walk in. And the telephone has been ringing for some time."
Lisa mumbled an apology and escaped the tiny room before Judith could draw her into the council of war. Judith might tease her about acting like a medieval serf, but Nick obviously thought she was one and ought to know her place better. Clearly it was beneath him to discuss the Center's legal aflairs with a mere secretary. "Obnoxious, arrogant, presuming son-of-a-fc&cfc," she chanted to herself on the way down the hall to the reception room.
Ginevra's curly head popped out of the Crystal Healing Room. "If you're looking for that Mr. Sim-mons, honey, he's gone home with a bad headacheЧ and good riddance I"
"Sometimes," Lisa said darkly, "the cure is worse than the disease." She dashed into the reception room and grabbed the phone just as it quit ringing, said a few more good twentieth-century words that would have cheered Judith to hear, and settled back down to her list of phone calls.
Clifford Simmons slowly navigated his gleaming BMW down the Austin streets and cursed every dangling live oak limb or carelessly parked pickup that threatened to mar the shining perfection of his paint job. He hated this untidy snarl of streets west of the Capitol, with their old-fashioned houses and untidy lawns and ill-assorted clutter of people. The new office buildings downtown were more to his taste, gleaming black glass and polished pink granite and smooth hard edges. A pity they were mostly empty in the current recessionЧor perhaps not such a pity; his own imposing office was nearly rent-free,
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the owners of the building were so grateful for any tenants to make the place look occupied.
He wanted to be back in that office now, comforting his soul with the sweep of his kidney-shaped mahogany desk and the polished chrome desk set and the cube of smokey black glass that most people took for a paperweight. All the symbols of success, and concealed among them, real power that the fools he dealt with never recognized. He could sense things about people, could make them do and say what he wanted, could gently push men and events the way he wanted them to go. Ever since he could remember, even back when he'd been a rawboned farm boy named Clay Simcik, Cliff had known about the power. His mother gave him extra cookies when he'd earned a scolding; his teachers smiled and passed him up to the next class without bothering about little details like his abysmal reading scores. Even now Cliff had trouble reading the long legal documents that crossed his desk. So what? If you're powerful enough, you can always hire somebody to do your reading. Why bother with deciphering chicken-scratches, when you can get what the scratches mean by looking deep into someone's eyes and pushing his soul the way you desire?
Nothing mattered but that, the rush of power he felt when somebody gave in against their own inner resistance. Easy ones like his old lady schoolteachers were no fun; he could never be sure they weren't really passing him out of pity or misguided kindness. The only time he really knew and believed in his own powers was when he could make somebody do something they really didn't want to.