"Alfred Bester - Demolished Man, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bester Alfred)

disappointed. We're going to play a wonderful old game; and we're going to
play it in the dark."
The company cheered up as the overhead lights began to dim and
disappear. The dais still blazed, and in the light, Maria produced a
tattered volume. Reich's gift.
Tension...
Maria turned the pages slowly, blinking at the unaccustomed print.
Apprehension...
"It's a game," Maria cried, "called `Sardine.' Isn't that too
adorable?"
She took the bait. She's on the hook. In three minutes I'll be
invisible. Reich felt his pockets. The gun. The Rhodopsin. Tension,
apprehension, and dissension have begun.
"One player," Maria read, "is selected to be It. That's going to be
me. All the lights are extinguished and the It hides anywhere in the
house." As Maria struggled through the directions, the great hall was
reduced to pitch darkness with the exception of the single pink beam on the
stage.
"Successively each player finding the Sardine joins them until all are
hidden in one place, and the last player, who is the loser, is left to
wander alone in the dark." Maria closed the book. "And darlings, we're all
going to feel sorry for the loser because we're going to play this funny
old game in a darling new way."
As the last light on the dais melted away, Maria stripped off her gown
and displayed the astonishing nude body that was a miracle of pneumatic
surgery. "We're going to play Sardine like this!" she cried. The last light
biinked out. There was a roar of exultant laughter and applause, followed
by a multiple whisper of cloth drawn across skin. Occasionally there came
the sound of a rip, then muttered exclamations and more laughter.
Reich was invisible at last. He had half an hour to slip up into the
house, find and kill D'Courtney, and then return to the game. Tate was
committed to pinning the peeper secretaries out of the line of his attack.
It was safe. It was foolproof except for the Chervil boy. He had to take
that chance.
He crossed the main hall and jostled into bodies at the west arch. He
went through the arch into the music room and turned right, groping for the
stairs.
At the foot of the stairs he was forced to climb over a barrier of
bodies with octopus arms that tried to pull him down. He ascended the
stairs, seventeen eternal steps, and felt his way through a close tunnel
overpass papered with velour. Suddenly he was seized and a woman crushed
herself against him.
"Hello, Sardine," she whispered in his ear. Then her skin became aware
of his clothes. "Owww!" she exclaimed, and felt the hard outlines of the
gun in his breast pocket. "What's that?" He slapped her hand away.
"Clever-up, Sardine," she giggled. "Get out of the can."
He divested himself of her and bruised his nose against the dead-end
of the overpass. He turned right, opened a door and found himself in a
vaulted gallery over fifty feet long. The lights were extinguished here
too, but the luminescent paintings, glowing under ultra-violet spotlights,