"Paul Di Filippo - The Reluctant Book" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

you
like that?"
Canto tried to envision this tolerable future Vellum sketched, but the
vision wavered and refused to cohere. Nonetheless, he tried to match
his
level of resignation and optimism to hers.
"Of course I'd like such a wonderful thing to happen. But I just don't
see--"
Vellum laid a clawed finger across his lips. "Shush, Canto. Have faith.
Now, go back to your carrel so you don't get either of us in trouble."
 Canto and Vellum rubbed wet noses, and then Canto snuck off.
He had one foot across the lintel of his own dormitory when, like the
jaws
of an antique steam-shovel descending on a clod of soil, a roving
security
factotum gripped his shoulder with a steely pinch.

In his lugubrious lucubratory, MB Kratchko Stallkamp sat gloating in
his
big actisoothe chair behind his impressive desk, looking like a ratty
kingfisher plucked from its lakeside perch and unexpectedly plonked
down
atop a throne. Stallkamp savored now a piquant contradiction. Acquiring
Holbrook's library, cheap though the purchase had been, had drained his
liquid assets, insuring future material pain and roadblocks in the
smooth
maintenance of Brundisium. But the sacrifice would be worth it, since
now
imminent success in his chosen field was practically guaranteed.
Stallkamp was no dilettante like Holbrook, wasting his energies across
a
dozen trivial fields. He specialized in a single discipline.
Remarkably,
this crabbed, self-centered fellow whose horizon seemed to extend no
further than the end of his nose regularly contemplated vistas of
Godlike
proportions, for Stallkamp was an haruspic cosmochartist. Like some
extinct astrologer, he read the stars in order to prophesize. But
Stallkamp and his ilk proceeded on a more scientific basis.
The universe had structure: so much was undeniable. Agglomerations of
stars formed galaxies. Neighboring galaxies in turn formed clusters.
Clusters of galaxies arranged themselves into superclusters. And so on,
upward along several additional levels of scale, a self-sustaining mode
of
organization that rendered the three-dimensional cosmos into something
resembling a highly recomplicated sponge or a block of Swiss cheese
tunneled by an infinite number of drunken mice. Haruspic cosmochartists
sought to unravel the plenum's patterning, its filaments and traceries.
With this knowledge, they hoped to prove certain weighty tenets of
post-Tiplerian eschatology.