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

incredible happened to him: his fur coat wilted before my eyes, collapsed like a punctured
balloon! I stood over him, astounded, unable even to mutter an apology. He picked himself up,
gave me a dirty look, but said nothing; he turned and marched off, fingering something on his
chest -- and his coat filled out and lit up again. . .
By now the place that the girl had pointed out to me was deserted. After this incident I
gave up looking for rasts, the Inner Circle, ducts, and switches; I decided to get out of the station.
My experiences so far did not encourage me to accost passers-by, so at random I followed a
sloping sky-blue arrow upward; without any particular sensation, my body passed through two
signs glowing in the air: LOCAL CIRCUITS. I came to an escalator that held quite a few people.
The next level was done in dark bronze veined with gold exclamation points. Fluid joinings of
ceilings and concave walls. Ceilingless corridors, at the top enveloped in a shining powder. I
seemed to be approaching living quarters of some kind, as the area took on the quality of a
system of gigantic hotel lobbies -- teller windows, nickel pipes along the walls, recesses with
clerks; maybe these were offices for currency exchange, or a post office. I walked on. I was now
almost certain that this was not the way to an exit and (judging from the length of the ride
upward) that I was in the elevated part of the station; nevertheless I kept going in the same
direction. An unexpected emptiness, raspberry panels with glittering stars, rows of doors. The
nearest was open. I looked in. A large, broad-shouldered man looked in from the opposite side.
Myself in a mirror. I opened the door wider. Porcelain, silver pipes, nickel. Toilets.
I felt a little like laughing, but mainly I was nonplused. I quickly turned around: another
corridor, bands, white as milk, flowing downward. The handrail of the escalator was soft, warm; I
did not count the levels passed; more and more people, who stopped in front of enamel boxes that
grew out of the wall at every step; the touch of a finger, and something would fall into their
hands; they put this into their pockets and walked on. For some reason I did exactly as the man in
the loose violet coat in front of me had done; a key with a small depression for the fingertip, I
pressed, and into my palm fell a colored, translucent tube, slightly warm. I shook it, held it up to
one eye; pills of some kind? No. A vial? It had no cork, no stopper. What was it for? What were
the other people doing? Putting the things in their pockets. The sign on the dispenser: LARGAN. I
stood there; I was jostled. And suddenly I felt like a monkey that has been given a fountain pen or
a lighter; for an instant I was seized by a blind rage; I set my jaw, narrowed my eyes, and,
shoulders hunched, joined the stream of pedestrians. The corridor widened, became a hall. Fiery
letters: REAL AMMO REAL AMMO.
Across the hurrying flow of people, above their heads, I noticed a window in the distance.
The first window. Panoramic, enormous.
All the firmaments of the night flung onto a flat plane. On a horizon of blazing mist --
colored galaxies of squares, clusters of spiral lights, glows shimmering above skyscrapers, the
streets: a creeping, a peristalsis with necklaces of light, and over this, in the perpendicular,
cauldrons of neon, feather crests and lightning bolts, circles, airplanes, and bottles of flame, red
dandelions made of needle-signal lights, momentary suns and hemorrhages of advertising,
mechanical and violent. I stood and watched, hearing, behind me, the steady sough of hundreds
of feet. Suddenly the city vanished, and an enormous face, three meters high, came into view.
"You have been watching clips from newsreels of the seventies, in the series Views of the
Ancient Capitals. Now the news. Transtel is currently expanding to include cosmolyte studios. .
."
I practically fled. It was no window. A television screen. I quickened my pace. I was
perspiring a little.
Down. Faster. Gold squares of lights. Inside, crowds, foam on glasses, an almost black
liquid -- not beer, with its virulent, greenish glint -- and young people, boys and girls, arms
around one another, in groups of six, eight, blocking the way across the entire thoroughfare, came
toward me; they had to separate to let me through. I was buffeted. Without realizing it, I stepped