"Charles L. Harness - The Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

"He is the Committee."

"What did you say his name was?"

"I didn't."
She peered up at him suspiciously. "I can play games, too. If he's so anxious to use my music, why
doesn't he come to see me?"

"He isn't that anxious."

"Oh, a big shot, eh?"

"Not exactly. It's just that he's fundamentally indifferent toward the things that fundamentally interest him.
Anyway, he's got a complex about the Via RosaтАФloves the district and hates to leave it, even for a few
hours."

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Will you believe it, I've never been there. That's the rose-walled
district where the ars-gratia-artis professionals live, isn't it? Sort of a plutocratic Rive Gauche?"

The man exhaled in expansive affection. "That's the Via, all right. A six-hundred pound chunk of Carrara
marble in every garret, resting most likely on the grand piano. Poppa chips furiously away with an
occasional glance at his model, who is momma, posed au natural."

Anna watched his eyes grow dreamy as he continued. "Momma is a little restless, having suddenly
recalled that the baby's bottle and that can of caviar should have come out of the atomic warmer at some
nebulous period in the past. Daughter sits before the piano keyboard, surreptitiously switching from
Czerny to a torrid little number she's going to try on the trap-drummer in Dorran's Via orchestra. Beneath
the piano are the baby and mongrel pup. Despite their tender age, this thing is already in their blood. Or
at least, their stomachs, for they have just finished an hors d'oeuvre of marble chips and now amiably
share the pi├иce de r├йsistance, a battered but rewarding tube of Van Dyke brown."

Anna listened to this with widening eyes. Finally she gave a short amazed laugh. "Matt Bell, you really
love that life, don't you?"

He smiled. "In some ways the creative life is pretty carefree. I'm just a psychiatrist specializing in
psycho-genetics. I don't know an arpeggio from a dry point etching, but I like to be around people that
do." He bent forward earnestly. "These artistsтАФthese golden peopleтАФthey're the coming force in
society. And you're one of them, Anna, whether you know it or like it. You and your kind are going to
inherit the earthтАФonly you'd better hurry if you don't want Martha Jacques and her National Security
scientists to get it first. So the battle lines converge in Renaissance II. Art versus Science. Who dies?
Who lives?" He looked thoughtful, lonely. He might have been pursuing an introspective monologue in the
solitude of his own chambers.

"This Mrs. Jacques," said Anna. "What's she like? You asked me to see her tomorrow about her
husband, you know."

"Darn good-looking woman. The most valuable mind in history, some say. And if she really works out
something concrete from her Sciomnia equation, I guess there won't be any doubt about it. And that's
what makes her potentially the most dangerous human being alive: National Security is fully aware of her
value, and they'll coddle her tiniest whimтАФat least until she pulls something tangible out of Sciomnia. Her