"Alfred Bester - Galatea Galante" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bester Alfred)

"Penthouse."
"Wh-what?"
"Come up to the penthouse. I'll show you."
Manwright led Corque out of the enormous crimson-lit cellar laboratory which was softly glowing with ruby-colored glassware and liquids ("My babies must be insulated from light -and noise") and up to the main floor of the


house. It was decorated in the Dominie's demented style: a hodgepodge of Regency, classic Greek, African, and Renaissance. There was even a marble pool inhabited by iridescent manic fish, which gazed up at the two men eagerly.
"Hoping we'll fall in," Manwright laughed. "A cross between piranha and golden carp. One of my follies."
Thence to the second floor, twenty-five by a hundred. Manwright's library and study: four walls shelved and crammed with tapes, publications, and software; a rolling ladder leaning against each wall; a gigantic carpenter's workbench center, used as a desk and piled with clutter.
Third floor divided between dining room (front), kitchen and pantry (center), and servants' quarters (rear, overlooking garden).
Fourth floor, enjoying maximum sky and air, bedrooms. There were four, each with its own dressing room and bath, all rather severe and monastic. Manwright regarded sleep as a damned necessity which had to be endured but which should never be turned into a luxury.
"We all get enough sleep during our nine months in the womb," he had growled to Corque, "and we'll get more than we'll ever need after we die. But I'm working on regenerative immortality, off and on. Trouble is, tissues just don't want to play ball." He led the professor up a narrow stair to the penthouse.
It was a clear plastic dome, firmly anchored against wind and weather. In the center stood a glimmering Rube Goldberg, Heath-Robinson, Da Vinci mechanical construct. If it resembled anything it would be a giant collapsing robot waiting for a handyman to put it together again. Corque stared at the gallimaufry and then at Manwright.
"Neutrinoscope," the Dominie explained. "My extrapolation of the electron microscope."
"What? Neutrinos? The beta-decay process?"
Manwright nodded. "Combined with a cyclotron. I get particular particle selection that way and acceleration up to ten Mev. Selection's the crux, Charles. Each genetic molecule in the RNA coil has a specific response to a specific particle bombardment. The way I've been able to identify and isolate somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand messenger commands."
"But-but-My dear Reg, this is positively fantastic!"
Manwright nodded again, "Uh-huh. Took me ten years."
"But I had no idea that- Why haven't you published?"
"What?" Manwright snorted in disgust. "Publish? And have every damned quack and campus cretin clowning around with the most sacred and miraculous phenomenon ever generated on our universe? Pah! No way!"
"You're into it, Reg."
Manwright drew himself up with hauteur. "I, sir, do not clown."
"But Reg -"
"But me no buts, professor. By heaven, if Christ, in whom I've never believed, ever returned to Terra and this house, I'd keep it a secret. You know damn well the hell that would break loose if I published. It'd be. Golgotha all over again."
While Corque was wondering whether Manwright meant his biodroid techniques, Christ's epiphany, or both, there was a sound of a large object slowly falling upstairs. Manwright's scowl was transformed into a grin. "My housekeeper," he chuckled. "You didn't get the chance to see him when you moved in last night. A treasure."
An imbecile face, attached to a pinhead, poked through the penthouse door. It was followed by a skewed hunchback body with gigantic hands and feet. The mouth, which seemed to wander at will around the face, opened and spoke in a hoarse voice.
"Mahth-ter . . ."


"Yes, Igor?"
"Should I thteal you a brain today, mahth-ter?"
"Thank you, Igor. Not today"
"Then breakfahtht ith therved, mahth-ter."
"Thank you, Igor. This is our distinguished guest, the celebrated Professor Charles Corque. You will make him comfortable and obey him in everything."
"Yeth, mahth-ter. At your thervithe, thelebrated Profethor Charlth Corque. Should I thteal you a brain today?"
"Not today, thank you."
Igor bobbed his head, turned, disappeared, and there was a sound of a large object rapidly falling downstairs. Corque's face was convulsed with suppressed laughter. "What in the world-?"
"A reject," Manwright grinned. "Only one in my career. No, the first of two, if we count Sandy, but I do think Jessamy will keep his Siren. Anyway," he continued, leading Corque downstairs, "this client was absolutely hypnotized by the Frankenstein legend. Came to me and contracted for a faithful servitor, like the Baron's accomplice. Returned five months later, paid like a gent, but said he'd changed his mind. He was now on a Robinson Crusoe kick and wanted a Friday. I made him his Friday, but I was stuck with Igor."
"Couldn't you have dissolved him back into the DNA broth?"
"Good God, Charles! No way. Never. I generate life; I don't destroy it. Anyway, Igor's an ideal housekeeper. He does have this brain-stealing hang-up-that was part of the original model-and I have to lock him in a closet when there's thunder and lightning, but he cooks like an absolute genius."
"I hadn't known that Baron Frankenstein's henchman was a chef."
"To be quite honest, Charles, he wasn't. That was an error
in programming-I do glitch now and then-with a happy ending. When Igor's cooking, he thinks he's making monsters."
The card came in on the same tray with the Tomato-Onion Tart (ripe tomatoes, sliced onions, parsley, basil, Gruyere, bake in pastry shell forty minutes at 375░F), and Manwright snatched the embossed foil off the salver.
"What's this, Igor? `Anthony Valera, Chairman, Vortex Syndicate, 69 Old Slip, CB: 0210-0012-036-216291'?"
"In the waiting room, mahth-ter."
"By God, Charles, a potential client. Now you may have your chance to watch my genesis from start to finish. Come on!"
"Oh, have a heart, Reg. Let the chairman wait. Igor's monster looks delicious."
"Thank you, thelebrated Profethor Charlth Corque."
"No, no, Igor. The thanks go from me to you."