"William H. Keith Jr. - Warstrider 03 - Jackers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keith jr William H)

of the lattice and paper shoji of a traditional house, woven
tatami on the floors, gentle lighting from no visible source,
these were the surroundings of a well-to-do merchant,
perhaps, not a daimyo of the Empire. The only visible
indicators of true wealth were the servants - humans rather
than robots, and the women showing the too-perfect
beauty of genegineered ningyo.
Munimori must want something exceptional, Kawashima
thought as he followed the big man deeper into the
warrens of his private residence. He had never known the
Fleet Admiral to show such generosity to anyone save,
possibly, to the highest ranking daimyos of the Imperial
government.
Most of the senior Imperial military officers maintained
quarters here within the slowly rotating Palace of Heaven,
close by the Chrysanthemum Throne itself. Munimori's
residence was located at the one-sixth-G level of the
Tenno Kyuden wheel, and the lesser gravity - about what
one would experience on the Moon - obviously was to his
liking. He moved with an oddly graceful, sliding walk that
carried his mass with surprising speed along the smooth,
slightly curving floors, and Kawashima had to hurry -
carefully for fear of falling and losing face - to keep up. He
doubted that the big man would be able to stand in a full
gravity.
They stopped in an austerely spartan room - but not the
one reserved for the tea ceremony. There were no
furnishings at all save a tatami on the floor, an antique
sword rack, and a peculiar, twisting inochi-zo by itself in a
small alcove.
"Please wait here," his host commanded, and
Kawashima was left alone.
He was drawn at once to the inochi-zo, a "life-statue"
standing perhaps a third of a meter tall. Like some
obscene plant, it grew from a pot of soil, but it appeared to
be sculpted of living flesh, an exquisitely delicate
homunculus crafted by a genegineer's art. Its overall form
was that of a nude man, but the limbs bent and folded
about its artistically twisted torso, a part of the body they
embraced. Lacking a head, the creature's face had been
grafted onto a broadened chest; the mouth gaped in a
voiceless, breathless, and eternal scream, while the living
eyes followed Kawashima's every move.
He'd heard of such things, of course, but had never
seen one, for they were quite rare and extraordinarily
expensive. Though each was unique, as befitted a work of
art, they reputedly fell into one of two classes, the
tanoshimi-zo, which lived in continual orgasmic pleasure,
and their dark counterparts, the kurushimi-zo, for which
simply existence was unending agony.