"Broderick, Damien - The Dreaming (The Dreaming Dragons)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Broderick Damien)

Sutton was obliged to drag Bill away from the cage for the concentrated briefing session he'd prepared with Hugh Lapp and the physicist. The woman and the four men sat around a rickety table on stools, intently going over the documents and reports from previous experiments. Periodically shadows shifted subtly as the mirror flashed into existence, hovered for five minutes and extinguished itself. After ninety minutes Anne leaned back from the table, stretched, and said, 'I'm ravenous. I don't suppose we can have some sandwiches?'
'Not recommended,' said Hugh.
'You're telling me.' She pulled a face. 'But that's the best we can do over here in greasy-hand territory.'
'The only time I was in there I threw up,' the astronaut told her.
Anne nodded. 'You must have the same catering service.' Sighing, she asked delFord: 'Enemas too, I suppose?'
'I think so. And ten minutes of yoga before we pull the blanket over our heads.' He glanced at the captain, and his mouth drew down ironically. 'All our affective runs are done nude, Hugh. I hope you won't mind.'
'I'll try to sustain my grief.' His muscular shoulders moved. He gazed reflectively at Anne. She grinned back at him.
Minutes later, after she'd vanished into the bathroom with the enema bag, the men heard her vomiting in a business-like fashion. Hugh halted at the door of the men's room and raised his eyebrows. 'She's that nervous?'
'No. I'll be doing the same myself. It's a combination of common sense and Reichian relaxation therapy. Emptying the gut is a precaution suggested by your own experience. But I wouldn't recommend it unless you know how -- it's a bit wearing.'
DelFord came out naked, and kicked his sandals off at the edge of the cage. The technicians had positioned three aluminium and foam plastic harnesses during the briefing; Anne, eyes closed and breathing deeply, was already resting semisupine in the central billet. Bill climbed up beside her and squeezed her hand. She really is a most attractive woman, he thought. How the hell does she keep that rich suntan? Her light brown hair, long and fine, was swept up carefully in a knot. He recalled the feel of that hair, and was briefly sad. Their affair had been short and intense. Then he thought, with amusement, She's lusting after our honest captain today. The myth of astronauts. I wonder how long it'll take her to have him in bed. Not long, he decided. Hughie's no slouch, unless I miss my mark.
Lapp crossed the floor, stolid in his nudity. He held something metallic in his fist; after he had clambered up and slid into place, he leaned across Anne and handed it to delFord. 'I took it out of your shirt pocket,' he said. 'It was barking at me. Like a pekinese.'
'Oh shit, Janine must have been trying to reach me. No time now. Dwayne,' he yelled, 'will you phone the main building and tell my secretary we're in the middle of a run? If it's Selma tell her I'm in bed with Bob and Alice.' He placed the phone on the black box at his head and said, 'Everyone ready?'
'Sure.'
'Let's go,' grunted the astronaut; he was pale, and his voice was tight.
'You heard what the man said,' Bill told Harrington. He saw the physicist's fingers jab a sequence of buttons on the central generator, then close a clear cover across them.
'The field activates in 20 seconds. Don't hesitate to cut loose if the experience is unbearable.'
Bill delFord ceased to exist.
The universe stopped at a concave sweep a couple of metres overhead. Flickeringly, internal lights came on, dimly, with a faint buzzing. Vestibular canals signalled vertigo, free fall, acceleration. A sharp scent of sweat and urine moved in the air. Nobody home.
Abruptly, tinnily, a massed choir of male and female voices cried joyously:
_Halleluiah, Halleluiah, hal-le-ee-loo-oo-ya!_
An elephant trumpeted, and a bloodhound belled. The imperative hoot of a fire-siren, a pompous British voice clearing its throat and saying, 'Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking', the scrape of many chairs as a multitude made good its escape, a symphony of cash-registers, a speeded-up Japanese voice saying, 'My feet are getting closer', a lavatory flushing, and a moist, protracted, lubricious fart.
In the incredulous silence, there was a strangled, hysterical gasp.
'Our Farter, Which art in Heaven -- '
Peals of silly giggles.
'Fart for art's sake.'
'Sewerealism?'
Booming guffaws, like drunken oafs.
'Don't talk such shit.'
'You taking the piss out of me?'
'What a bummer, it's just pouring out.'
Bill delFord did not exist, but some wiring diagram thought in desperation, This is no proper pastime for a philosopher. We need --
' -- Sir Karl Pooper.'
'"The Open Society and Its Enemas"?'
A shriek of drawn-out laughter. 'No. That's Jean-Paul Farter.' A pause. 'The existenchilist.'
'She was only a stable-hand but all the horse manure.'
'That's a handicrap.'
'Golf? Prefer the shit-put.'
'Never made the elimination-finals.'
'Team was pruned down.'
Pain in the chest, in the diaphragm.
'Clear your head with Diarretics.'
'Diuretics?'
'Shitology. Turdomancy. Movement of the future.'
'A tissue of lies.'
'Wipe the Opposition.'
'Support the Turd World.'
'Sounds like fecism.'
'Troops in jake-boots? Flushing out the Privy Council? Establishing the Dung Dynasty? You're potty!'
The foolish giggles came in convulsive, uncontrollable waves. Finally they ceased, and bodies rolled in their harnesses, hands knocking against sweat-slicked flesh and, finding it, touching, palping. Legs kicked and opened.
'Lapp me.'