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

whose handle had long gone missing.
"Allow me to conduct you to the mysteries," said The Venerable Bede.
Stallkamp barked, "What! What's that? I'll have no truck with mysteries
of
any stripe!"
The Venerable Bede opened a panel under its left armpit and reset a
switch. "Excuse me, I meant the mistresses."
"Very well then. Lead on."
Lame leg evoking a regular plastic knocking, the factotum conducted the
human visitor through many a drafty, dusty hall hung with animated
tapestries whose ancient routines ran only spastically now, and through
many a polycarbon-cobwebbed chamber where only the glowing LED eyes of
artifical spiders illuminated their way. In one vast high-ceilinged
ballroom, sentry bats squeaked from on high, alert for intrusions by
any
of the myriad types of rogue colonizing insects--escapees from hobbyist
workbenches--that populated the dense forests around the manse, those
groves themselves engineered so long ago that the names of their
designers
no longer erupted in spontaneous stipples from bark or leaf.
 Finally the pair reached the center of the house, a warm, well-lighted
kitchen. The heady fragrance of brewing Estruvial Spice tea filled the
room with a synthetic allure. In one corner of the kitchen a cot with
rumpled covers indicated as plainly as speech that here had Holbrook
slept, as well as taken his rudimentary meals, ceding the rest of the
house to moth and decay.
"The mysteries," announced The Venerable Bede, then departed.
Seated at a big wooden table with a warped and scarred top were Marlys
and
Taffy Holbrook. The sisters both exhibited the high-gloss perfections
of
the extensively reconfigured elite, although each possessed her own
individual style. Marlys had had her scalp hair eliminated and facial
features minimized: eyes, nose, nostrils, ears and mouth reduced to the
barest pinpoint functionality across a head bare as an egg. The result
sketched the nearly empty china face of a doll whose maker had run out
of
materials or ingenuity or both. Taffy boasted a leonine head of tawny
hair
framing a bestial living mask. The end of her leathery snout gleamed
wetly, her whiskers vibrating with each breath. Marlys wore a pinafore
and
flouncy skirt, Taffy an elastic suit striped from its scooped neck to
ankles.
"MB Stallkamp," purred Taffy. "Please, take a seat."
Marlys's high voice emerged as if from a paper-bellows-and-bamboo-reed
mechanism of no large size. "Yes. Join us in some tea."
Stallkamp waved away both offers brusquely. "No time for socializing.
I'm
only interested in the books."