"Samuel R. Delany - High Weir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

superimpositions from special-effect sequences in old color films.

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Jimmi was sitting on the bottom step, reading. She had chosen (a little unwillingly)
to stay with the patient.
Crash!

She looked up.

Richard Nielson was trundling down the steps toward her. And at the top, stood
naked Rimkin. Jimmi leapt away as the bust struck the reader she had dropped on
the steps.
"Rimky, are you тАж?"

He came down the steps, three of them slowly, seven of them fast, the last two
slowly. Then, while she was debating whether to try and restrain him physically, he
was gone through the double doors to the lockers. She ran toward themтАФthe two
brass handles swung up and clicked. She crashed against them. But behind the
veneer that looked like walnut was ribbed steel.

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Inside the locker, Rimkin fumbled the catches of his air suit and thought. Hot. Hot
outside. Twice he dropped the contraption on the grilled floor. Boiled тАж boiled
something. An Earthman would boil out there on the desert without a suit. But why
was he worrying? He wasn't sure who or what he might be. But the streets with
their shaggy pennants and their elegant citizens walking their shambling beasts with
blood-colored eyes; they were waiting for him there in the hot city, the dusty city,
with high, marsite facades from which the carven heads gazed down on dry
gutters.
He didn't need a suit, of course. But the lock-release switch was inside the suit, and
it wouldn't work unless the suit was sealed. He picked up the white, slippery material
again. Sealing the suit was almost habit; and the habits must have been working,
because the skimmer door was opening now. Through his faceplate he could almost
see the great city of High Weir stretching away to the temple. But slightly out of
focus, indistinct.тАж How was he supposed to know which were shapes of time-cast
dust and which were the intelligent creations of the amazing culture of his people, his
planet? He brushed his arm around his faceplateтАФbut that didn't do any good.

He walked down the blazing, alien street.

And the street sucked his boots.

He was going to take off his air suit soon. Yes. Because there was no need for it in
such a brilliant city. But wait just a few minutes, because things were still too
unfocused, too amorphous. And sand, from when he'd brushed his arm across his
faceplate, kept trickling down the plastic. Nor were the figures in front of him