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

Taffy removed a key from her d├йcolletage. "Here's all you need."
Stallkamp strode impatiently to the door, but was brought up short by a
shrill invocation of his name from Marlys. He turned around. "Yes?"
"There's a way you could gain Vincent's library without expending any
money, sir. Each of us in the market for a new husband. Surely one or
even
both of us might appeal to a learned gentleman such as yourself."
From between his overarching shoulder blades, Stallkamp favored each of
the women with a long piercing look before saying, "Sorry, but no. You
two
are of an exquisitely high-toned breed incompatible with my humble
station."
Inserting the still-warm key into the lock of the bookbarn door,
Stallkamp
quickly let himself in, leaving the Holbrook sisters simpering from the
flattery whose irony had escaped them.

Canto had not asked to be born a book, any more than he had chosen the
ratios of his mixed genotype and his consequent motley appearance. But
having received such an assignment from fate (in the case of the
subservient Canto and his fellow books, of course, fate wore an
all-too-human guise), he generally tried to make the best of things.
Being
a book--at least in this collection--did not hold the terrors
associated
with many other chimerical employments: toxin tester, vacuum worker,
seabed miner. Boredom, lack of freedom, the rigors of new textual
creation
and mixing--these were the worst things a book generally faced.
Some days were easier than others, naturally--days when the majority of
books were left uncalled-upon and could conduct their own well-ordered
social life. But since the death of their beloved librarian, MB
Holbrook,
these good days had been few and far between. True, not a single
requisition had obtruded on their private time, but this accidental
vacation was not without attendant drawbacks. First had come the
diminished heat and light in the bookbarn, leaving the books to shiver
and
huddle in the unchanged hay of their darkened carrels. Next they had
felt
 the sting of hunger, as their meals began to arrive from the automated
synthesizers with increasing infrequency and diminished quality. (The
books were not privy to the many arguments among Holbrook's heirs about
how best to minimize estate expenditures during the breakup of the
property, nor were their votes solicited.) Finally, the books suffered
from the black, bleak uncertainty concerning their future.
The bookbarn bulked four stories high, with over a hundred carrels per
floor. Central to each level was a reading room forbidden to the books
save when called there by the librarian. Serving as their social focus
instead was the unallocated floorspace around the meal synthesizers,