"Edghill,.Rosemary.-.Empty.Crown.Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edghill Rosemary)

Philip.

Ruth Marlowe was a charter member of the sane, reasonable,
people-can-get-along-if-they'll-just-try contingent of the Silent
Majority, and having never been really popular in her life, saw no
reason to disparage people simply because they weren't cool enough to
hang with. But there were, she felt, limits to that kind of social
tolerance.

Putting up with Philip, in Ruth's opinion, was carrying tolerance to
self-destructive extremes.

Philip LeStrange (Jane had told her-and God alone knew how Jane had
found out-that his middle name was Leslie, and Ruth hoarded this
information against a day of great need) was weedy, blond, short,
twenty-two, and the product of respectable (and, Ruth felt,
overindulgent) parents who were sure that his health was too delicate
for anything more than a quiet respectable career as a librarian. It
was something to do with a heart murmur, Michael had told her once, and
if she had been Philip's parents and in possession of this knowledge
she would have encouraged her only chick and child to take up
lumberjacking.

Philip LeStrange had pale blue eyes and no mercy and if he did not
idolize Michael he would have been impossible to tolerate. As it was,
he was merely difficult. Philip was wonderfully ill-suited to the
library field, having no particular interest in any writing that did
not appear on a computer screen, and was already planning to specialize
in the electronic databases that were encroaching (like mold) on the
traditional library resources-for in his own small and illegal way
Philip was brilliant.

At least, amended Ruth, Philip was illegally brilliant if you believed
half of what he said about his computer hacking and other anarchic
activities, but since she had no talent in that realm herself and did
not take any particular vicarious delight in random lawbreaking, she
had no idea how much of what he said he did Philip actually did and how
much was just retold urban folklore with himself cast in the starring
role: an amoral Robin Hood of cyberspace, unfailingly successful.

It was a pity he was so unprepossessing. Perhaps that was why Michael
put up with him-and why Ruth herself did. Philip rapped the rap of a
darkling prince of the city, soignd and dangerous, when what he
resembled was a pink-eyed laboratory rat, sickly, hopeful, and fatally
out of synch with true hipness. Clothes that would look gloriously
macho on Michael-blue jeans, black high-tops, white T-shirt, and red
(James Dean) Lands End windcheater (not that Philip had ever heard of
James Dean)-made Philip resemble some alien life-form unconvincingly
impersonating a Real Human Being. But Philip's utter inhumanity did
not breed compassion in Ruth's bosom-which was odd, considering what