"Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore - Prisoner In The Skull" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"Right. After I figure out the right method of dream-analysis, it'll be perfect." He took her coat, led her into the
livingroom, which was shaped like a fat comma and walled with triple-seal glass, and decided not to kiss her. Veronica
seemed withdrawn. That was regrettable. He suggested a drink. . "Perhaps I'd better have one," she said, "before I look
the joint over."

Fowler began battling with a functional bar. It should have poured and mixed drinks at the spin of a dial, but instead
there came a tinkle of breaking glass. Fowler finally gave up and went back to the old-fashioned method. "Highball?
Well, theoretically, this is a perfect machine for living. But the architect wasn't as perfect as his theoretical ideas.
Methods of construction have to catch up with ideas, you know."

"This room's nice," Veronica acknowledged, relaxing on airfoam. With a glass in her hand, she seemed more cheerful.
"Almost everything's curved, isn't it? And I like the windows."

"It's the little things that go wrong. If a fuse blows, a whole unit goes out. The windowsтАФI insisted on those."

"Not much of a, view."
"Unimproved. Building restrictions, you know. I wanted to build on the top of a hill a few miles away, but the township
laws wouldn't allow it. This house is unorthodox. Not very, but enough. I might as well have tried to put up a Wright
house in Williamsburg. This place is functional and convenientтАФ"

"Except when you want a drink?"

"Trivia," Fowler said airily. "A house is complicated. You expect a few things to go wrong at first. I'll fix 'em as they
come up. I'm a jerk of all.trades. Want to look around?"

"Why not?" Veronica said. It wasn't quite the enthusiastic reaction for which Fowler had hoped, but he made the best
of it. He showed her the house. It was larger than it had seemed from the outside. There was nothing super about it,
but it wasтАФ theoreticallyтАФa functional unit, breaking away completely from the hidebound traditions that had made
attics, cellars, and conventional bathrooms and kitchens as vestigially unfunctional as the vermiform appendix.
"Anyway," Fowler said, "statistics show most accidents happen in kitchens and bathrooms. They can't happen here."

"What's this?" Veronica asked, opening a door. Fowler grimaced.

"The guest room," he said. "That was the single mistake. I'll use it for storage or something. The room hasn't any
windows."

"The light doesn't workтАФ"

"Oh, I forgot. I turned off the main switch. Be right back." He hurried to the closet that held the house controls, flipped
the switch, and returned. Veronica was looking into a room that was pleasantly furnished as a bedroom, and, with
tinted, concealed fluorescents, seemed light and airy despite the lack of windows.

"I called you," she said. "Didn't you hear me?"

Fowler smiled and touched a wall. "Sound-absorbent. The whole house is that way. The architect did a good job, but
this roomтАФ"

"What's wrong with it?"