"Stanislaw Lem - Return from the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

"It's boring here," she continued after a moment. "Don't you think so? Shall we take off
somewhere, col?"
"I'm not a col. . ." I began. She leaned on the table with her elbows and moved her hand
across her half-filled glass, until the end of the golden chain around her fingers dipped into the
liquid. She leaned still closer. I could smell her breath. If she was drunk, it was not on alcohol.
"How's that?" she said. "You are. You have to be. Everybody is. What do you say? Shall
we?"
If only I knew what all that meant.
"All right," I said.
She stood up. And I got up from my horribly low chair.
"How do you do that?" she asked.
"Do what?"
She stared at my legs.
"I thought you were on your toes. . ."
I smiled but said nothing. She came up to me, took me by the arm, and was again
surprised.
"What have you got there?"
"Where, here? Nothing."
"You're singing," she said and lightly tugged at me. We walked among the tables and I
wondered what "singing" meant -- perhaps "you're kidding me"?
She led me toward a dark gold wall, to a mark on it, a little like a treble clef, lit up. At our
approach the wall opened. I felt a gust of hot air.
A narrow silver escalator flowed down. We stood side by side. She did not even reach my
shoulder. She had a catlike head, black hair with a blue sheen, a profile that was perhaps too
sharp, but she was pretty. If it were not for those scarlet nostrils. . . She held on to me tightly with
her thin hand, the green nails dug into my heavy sweater. I had to smile at the thought of where
that sweater had been and how little it had in common with the fingers of a woman. Beneath a
circular dome that breathed light -- from pink to carmine, from carmine to pink -- we went out
into the street. That is, I thought it was a street, but the darkness above us was every now and
then lit up, as if by a momentary dawn. Farther on, long, low silhouettes sailed past, much like
cars, but I knew that there were no more cars. It must have been something else. Even had I been
alone, I would have chosen this broad artery, because in the distance blazed the letters TO THE
CENTER, although that surely did not mean the center of the city. At any rate, I let myself be led.
No matter how this adventure was going to end, I had found myself a guide, and I thought -- this
time without anger -- of that poor fellow who now, three hours after my arrival, was undoubtedly
hunting for me through all the infors of this station-city.
We passed a number of half-empty bars, shopwindows in which groups of mannequins
were performing the same scene over and over again, and I would have liked to stop and see what
they were doing, but the girl hurried along, her slippers clicking, until, at the sight of a neon face
with pulsating red cheeks, which continually licked its lips with a comically loose tongue,
sheened:
"Oh, bonses! Do you want a bons?"
"Do you?" I asked.
"I think I do."
We entered a small bright room. Instead of a ceiling it had long rows of tiny flames, like
pilot lights; from above poured heat, so possibly it was indeed gas. In the walls I saw recesses
with counters. When we approached one of these, seats emerged from the wall on either side of
us; they seemed first to grow out from the wall in an undeveloped form, like buds, then flattened
in the air, turned concave, and became motionless. We sat facing each other; the girl tapped two
fingers on the metal surface of the table, and from the wall jumped a nickel claw, which tossed a