"Harrison, Harry - Rat10 - Stainless Steel Rat Joins Circus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

"Time for a break," Angelina said, taking him gently by the arm and leading him away. "With perhaps a small drink for your dry throat.
"The logic is sound," Chaise said, sitting down in a chair and pressing smooth the hairs of his fur morning suit. "However you have been paid a great deal of money and I would like to see some positive results. In fact, to encourage you in your investigation I am suspending your daily payments until you actually make contact with this suspect strongman."
"You can't do that!"
"Of course I can. Clause six, paragraph eighteen of our contract."
"I don't remember any clause that said that." My vision was blurred by the image of winged credits flying out into the night.
"You would if you had looked more closely at what you signed. You have a copy of the contract with you?"
"No. It's in the bank."
"A wise precaution. It just so happens that I have a copy with me, should you wish to peruse it."
He took a copy from his fur purse. No crisp vellum this time, but a printed copy. I read through it quickly, then raised it victoriously over my head. "I was right! There are only seventeen paragraphs in clause six."
"Indeed." Chaise did not seem disturbed by this announcement. He leaned over and pointed to end of the seventeenth paragraph. "And what do you think this is?"
I leaned close and blinked rapidly. "It looks like a blob of ink."
"Some might differ." He took a brass tube out of the bag and passed it over to me. "Look at it through this optic magnifier."
I did. "It still looks like a blob of ink."
"That is because the instrument is set on four times magnification. Try setting it to four hundred."
I found the setting wheel and gave it a twist. Looked again. The blob of ink resolved into a chunk of copy; paragraph eighteen. I was hooked.
"Do not despair," he advised. "Just work faster. This golden goal should act as some inspiration."
"It does! I'm on my way. Soon. My agent has been dealing with Bolshoi's Big Top and contracts have been drawn up. I will join them shortly, in time for opening night in Fetorr."
I spoke with firm resolution. A sales pitch to hide the fact that I had not mastered all of the illusions that I would need. Plus the fact that there wasn't a single porcuswine farm here on this pleasure planet. Still the fact remained that up until this moment Chaise had been a good and munificent employer and I wanted to keep him happy. Even if it meant being a little parsimonious with the truth. If he could renege on making the agreed daily payments, it seemed perfectly fair for me to massage the facts a little as well.
"See that you do arrive in time for opening night at the circus. For our mutual benefit," he said. "See you on opening night." He exited as swiftly as he had arrived and I went looking for Angelina, looking forward to one of those drinks she had talked about. She and Grissini were sitting and chatting in the atrium garden. I joined them and looked with more need than pleasure at a chilled and brimming glass that awaited me.
"Thank you," I said, and knocked it back in a single gulp.
Angelina's lovely eyebrows rose in a singularly questioning manner.
"Well some of us seem to have developed a sudden thirst. Trouble with Chaise?"
"Not exactly trouble. But not exactly pleasure as well. You know those little payments he has been making daily? It seems, according our contract, which contains a paragraph that looks like a blob of ink only isn't, that he can suspend them whenever he wishes. He now wishes. He will start them again when we join the circus."
"Blob of ink?" Angelina asked, puzzled.
"Only to the naked eye. Under magnification it becomes the dreaded paragraph."
"Then what we have been discussing before you came is most relevant. The Great Grissini and I have been talking about deadlines. Made more imperative now by the appearance of our employer."
"Everything cannot be done in time," Grissini said. Gulped from his glass and sighed. "You catch on quickly, but not quickly enough." I lowered my eyes and tried to look humble before my maestro. "I will see that you have enough illusions and tricks for a performance. But you will not be able to do the Vanishing Boy Sprout.. ."
"But I must! Your most famous turn. Why can't we do it?"
"Mainly because we don't have an eight-year-old Boy Sprout," Angelina said with chill logic. "I have looked into it and little boys are hard to find. Also against the law."
"My great blessing was that the Grissinis are a large family," he said. "I could always find a small cousin or nephew to aid me. Alas, all grown now and scattered to the far corners of the galaxy."
"Couldn't it be done without a boy?" I asked peevishly.
"Never! That is the strength of the illusion. The boy has been planted in the audience so he can volunteer. I always save this illusion for the last, the closing and most appreciated act of magic. To begin I shake out my great cape. A pigeon flies up, two rabbits hop away. The audience claps and applauds. I then raise my hands and there is a loud fanfare and a roll of thunder. The audience is instantly silent. I speak to them. This is the moment you have all been waiting for. Is there a Boy Sprout in the audience? In uniform? There are always a few. Show yourselves I say, and they spring to their feet. Come forward I cry. The first one here will join me in this next act of magic-and will receive twenty credits as well. They cry out and struggle to reach the stage first. But my assistant is seated in the first row, close to the aisle. He springs to his feet, pushing himself forwards. In doing so he brushes against people in his hurry, even stepping on their toes. Assuring all present that he really is a corporeal little boy. He assists me by bringing over a basket, sets it down before me. I take a length of rope and throw it into the basket. The boy waits patiently as the most eerie music begins. I make magical passes over the basket and the end of the rope appears, unsupported, and rises writhing into the air. The boy is just as impressed by this as is the audience. I wave him over and he passes behind me to approach the basket. The music grows louder still. Take the rope I command him and he draws back, afraid. I make a magical pass and his eyes roll back, his body stiffens. His will is now under my control. Now he does exactly what I order him to do. I wave my hand and he seizes the rope, then begins to climb it."
I nodded, enthralled by the illusion, actually seeing the boy climb, as impressed as the unseen audiences.
"And then-" he said dramatically, "-the boy reaches the top of the rope. The music ends with a mighty crash of the brasses, and I wave my hand. As I do this the boy is gone, vanished, and the rope falls limply back into the basket. I turn the basket over and the rope falls out. Nothing more. I bow and the curtain closes."
"Marvelous," Angelina said.
"How does it work?" I asked.
"Since you won't be doing it, you don't have to know."
And no amount of cajoling would get him to change his mind.
"I will not tell you. However I will reveal to you the il-. lusion of the levitating lady. The apparatus arrived this morning and I will go to install it." He rose, then turned to Angelina. "Did you purchase the black dress I mentioned?"
"1 did."
"Capital! If you would be so kind as to don it now, we will proceed."
I was left alone. Grissini was working, Angelina was dressing, I was drinking. Just enough to mellow me after Kaia's grim financial machinations. I had really begun to enjoy my morning calls to the bank.
"Do you like it?" Angelina said.
"Divine!" And it was-floor-length, black and velvety, fascinatingly low-cut above, flaring out when she turned.
"It will do," the Great Grissini said from the doorway. "Let us begin. I must instruct Angelina in her role." He looked at his watch. "Jim, you will join us in exactly a half an hour."
"Good as done," I said, looking at my own watch, then at the bottle. Well, maybe a small one while I marked the passage of time.
I was feeling remarkably mellow when I entered our home theater and took my seat. Dark curtains were drawn at the back of the stage. Which was empty save for three large cubes. Music welled up at Grissini's entrance and the maestro himself came on stage. He bowed to the audience and I clapped like fury.
"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. You must now prepare yourself for a magical thrill that will amaze, entrance and mystify you. Let us begin."
He walked over to the white cubes and tapped them with his wand; good, solid wood. Then he ran his fingers along his wand-and it vanished. Reaching down he turned the cubes, one by one, to face the audience, showing that they were foursided and open at both ends. Black outside, white inside and on the edges. His wand reappeared in his hand and he ran it through the opening of each one.
"Empty as you see. Simple, four-sided constructions, empty as you can see. I will now place them-so."