"James Patrick Kelly - Ninety Percent of Everything" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

attractive.
He immediately launched into the story of a woman down in the casino
who, only moments before, had pulled a hammer out of her purse and begun to
bludgeon the poker machine she'd been playing. When several bystanders
attempted to intervene, security had rushed to her defense. "It turns out
she's a destruction artist, hired by the casino to commit random acts of
vandalism for the amusement of the guests! These people certainly take their
spectacle seriously." He laughed as though he were being tickled.
I glanced up again at Laputa. It loomed now like a wok the size of a
post office, suspended beneath a yellow balloon. As it eased to a stop, two
multi-jointed arms unfolded from its underside; at the same time a boom with
built-in stairs rose up from the truck, hydraulics singing. The arms reached
for the boom and locked onto it. A hatch opened and I glimpsed a man dressed
in a blue uniform and a butter-colored beret. He disappeared. Through the
hatch shuffled a stream of people, forty or fifty strong. It was a middle-aged
crowd; most wore sneakers and shorts and pix shirts. What was strange was that
they all had one what looked like butter yellow boxing gloves.
"Tourists?" I asked Nguyen.
He nodded. "The operating costs for a floating house of this quality
are quite steep. And unlike my friend Wetherall, I'm not financially
independent. If you assume forty sightseers at forty dollars a head times four
tours then I make about sixty-five hundred dollars a day from opening Laputa
to my public."
At the bottom of the stairs a uniformed attendant collected the yellow
boxing gloves and ushered tourists onto a waiting bus.
"More than two million dollars a year," said Wetherall approvingly.
"And to think they gave you a MacArthur Grant for your architecture."
"You let all those people tramp through your house?" I said.
"What's good enough for the King of England is good enough for me."
Nguyen peered through the windshield. "I do apologize for the delay. It'll be
safe to go out in another minute or two."
"What are the gloves for?"
"Cuts down on breakage -- and pilferage. By the way, I'm halfway
through your infodump on shitdog psychology."
"Actually, I wrote it as a book."
"Is that so? Very readable, nevertheless. You don't think like most
academics. I'm intrigued when you say the shitdogs are not at all proprietary
about their finished piles."
"They didn't seem to care when we cut the jewels at Eastline A. And
they tolerate scientists taking core samples well enough."
"I wonder what they'd do if we wrapped them in plastic. Some sort of
smell abatement device, like a giant baggie. No?" He giggled, then opened the
door of the van. "Just a thought. Shall we go?"
He had timed his exit so that the tourists would be able to see him
from their moving bus. The windows filled almost immediately with faces.
Nguyen smiled and gave them a brisk wave. Wetherall ducked back into the van.
I couldn't help but see his look of alarm as he cowered behind the dashboard.
After the tour bus had disappeared down the ramp, I gave him a gentle nudge.
"They're only people, Wetherall. They don't bite."
"Some of them do," he said.