"Rampart World - 02 - Orion Arm" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

After a final tortured cry the alien wriggles backward to a depressed area of the floor where there is an in-spiraling gutter. At its center is a sensor knob that suddenly starts to blink red. A roll of recorded drums rattles from a loudspeaker. The Gwaliorite lifts its massive legless posterior slightly and excretes four golfball-sized droppings of gleaming solid metal that roll down the gutter, strike the sensor, and trigger a triumphant display of multicolored strobe lights and a flatulent tuba fanfare.
The crowd applauds raucously, the silver scybala disappear through a little trapdoor, and curtains sweep shut on the window, hiding the now motionless creature. Simultaneously, the drapes of the second window open, revealing a smaller Gwaliorite already munching minerals.
He remembers the lot attendant's chilling remark about pseudo-alien performers. But surely .. .
He questions one of the spacesuited doormen. "They're animatronic, aren't they? Just robots?"
The giant deopaques his helmet and looks down on him with a patronizing smirk. "The exhibits are alive, Citizen Frost. Perfect genen transforms. The procedure is illegal on the Outside, but there are no such restrictions in Coventry Blue."
"But why would even a ThrowawayЧ"
His queasy speculation is cut short by a sudden chilling insight: the doorman has recognized him, called him by name. His supposedly scannerproof visor has been penetrated by some high-tech gadgetry and his iris pattern analyzed and identified.
Alistair Drummond lied when he said that their meeting would be secret.
The doorman is saying, "We've been expecting you. Here, take this. Your entry fee is already paid." In the palm of the outstretched gloved hand is a shining sphere of xeno ordure. "The Silver Scybalum will be your passport to erotic delights beyond human comprehension. If you choose to accept them."
With a curse, he knocks the thing aside. The ball falls into a filthy puddle on the street, where shouting bystanders scrabble eagerly for it. Both doormen ignore the fracas, swing wide the double doors and gesture for him to enter. Having no choice, he does.
The establishment's lobby simulates a funky 1930s-style Buck Rogers starship, all brushed multicolored metal with gemlike rivets, obsidian panels, and round portholes framing astronomical scenes. Three heavily muscled ushers, dubiously female, insist upon divesting him of his outerwear and weaponry. They wear topless "space-girl" uniforms of bias-cut satin with cantilever support for their enormous bare breasts, elbow-length silver gloves, silver high-heeled boots, and open silver helmets topped with goofy little antennas. When they attempt to outfit him in an iridescent bodysuit with strategic cutouts he balks and threatens to leave.
"Be like that," one of the attendants sniffs. "You'll find it very inconvenient for the activities."
They open an inner portal that imitates an antique airlock with a handwheel. "Please follow the illuminated floor guides to Citizen Drummond's private box."
He squares his shoulders and moves forward slowly. It's dark in there. Music swells around him and the turgid air is redolent of musky perfume. Amplified moans and other wordless human cries mingle with insistent Stravinskyesque discords and thudding tympani. At his feet is a trail of tiny green lights shaped like arrows. They lead him down a short corridor that opens into a great murky bowl-shaped chamber, a theater-in-the-round with a central stage surrounded by tiers of spectator boxes that look like imaginary space vehicles conceived by a retro comic-book artist. Some of the boxes are open; others are enclosed for complete privacy, with mirrored one-way windows.
The ceiling is velvet-black, sparkling with colored stars and projections of interstellar gas clouds and galaxies. On the eerily lit stage, where hologrammatic plantlife impersonates an otherworldly jungle, four naked men struggle in the clutches of an enormous barrel-shaped alien resembling a feather-crowned purple sea anemone equipped with dozens of glistening opaline arms.
At first glance he thinks that the human performers are being devoured by the gorgeous monster. Their torn trek-suits and broken weapons are scattered among the scenery. Then he realizes that the men are engaged in bizarre sexual congress with the extraterrestrial, convulsing and uttering delirious wails as the final movement of the Rite of Spring rises to an overorchestrated crescendo.
He tastes bile in his throat and turns away, fighting for self-control. When he is finally able to pull himself together, the music has reached a thunderous climaxЧand so, evidently, have the human participants in the spectacle. He dares to look again and sees the performers lying spent in the beautiful creature's grasp. There is a blinding flash. When his vision recovers, he discovers that the stage is empty except for a ring of blue footlights.
He pauses, irresolute. The lights fade, a new tritely erotic theme beginsЧde Falla's El Amor BrujoЧand a column of whirling flames momentarily curtains the circular stage. The blazing barrier lowers to reveal a more ominous species of exotic seducer, insectile, skeletally thin, and studded with atrocious black thorns. It sways hypnotically and its amber eyes glow as a woman in ornate bondage harness slowly approaches it with outstretched arms.
The trail of green arrows still glows on the floor. He follows it down a long aisle of shallow steps to the lowest tier, which is entirely taken up by six exceptionally large enclosed spectator boxes. One of them is his destination. He raps firmly on the compartment's side door and it slides open, emitting a cloud of sweet narcotic fumes.
The Chairman and CEO of Galapharma Amalgamated Concern stands there, dimly backlit by interior wall sconces. His princely features have the perfection of genen rejuvenation, and every hair of his elaborately styled leonine coiffure is in place. Alistair Drummond is a tall man, and his shoulders are massive and his hands very large. He wears one of the obscene shiny bodysuits, mercifully covered with a belted scarlet brocade dressing gown. Poised artfully in his right hand is an antique jade cigarette holder with a smoldering giggle stick.
"Come in, lad! I'd nearly given up on you."
"Hello, Alistair." He is a good thirty minutes late but does not apologize.
Drummond motions his guest inside and shuts the door, diminishing the volume of the music. His voice is pitched low, peculiarly soft, with a slight Glaswegian accent. "I see that you didn't let the ushers dress you for the occasion. What a shame. I had some interesting entertainment planned for us before we got down to mundane matters."
"No, thank you," he says with polite regret. "Pseudoalien sex isn't really my style."
Alistair Drummond laughs. His ice-colored eyes show no sign of intoxication, and as always, they are completely unreadable. "The Silver Scybalum can furnish any sort of amusement you'd like. Anything the Blue Strip has to offer. Don't tell me that none of the attractions you saw on the way here appealed to you."
He mutters, "Not really."
"You're lying," Drummond says, without rancor. "It had better be your last lie. Do you understand me, lad?"
He swallows. "Yes."
"Excellent. Would you care for a drink?"
"Scotch and water would be fine."
The box seems much larger on the inside and apparently extends back beneath the steeply raked auditorium floor. The opulently cheesy interior continues the Art Deco starship theme. The place resembles the private retreat of Ming the Merciless or some other out-of-date science-fiction potentate. Its most conspicuous piece of furniture is a very wide couch covered with burgundy leather that takes up most of the compartment's far end. Three matching armchairs stand before a long one-way viewing window overlooking the stage. Underfoot lies black carpet as lush as mink fur. An onyx and silver food and beverage bar backed by softly illuminated erotic stained-glass murals occupies part of the rear wall, where there is a second door with a small electronic service panel mounted beside it.
For a brief, blood-quickening moment he wonders what might have come through that inner door if he had accepted the "entertainment" offered by his host. Then he feels a quaver of revulsion. Whatever it looked like, it would have been human once.
Drummond goes to the bar, stubs out the smoldering narcotic joint, and pours thirty-year-old Lagavulin single malt into two crystal tumblers, adding water to one. Before returning with the drinks, he touches a pad on the service unit and speaks.
"Will you join us now, Baldwin? There's been a slight change in plan."
Surprise, consternation. "Alistair, I thought we'd agreed that this meeting would be private!"
"Did we?" Drummond hands him the drink.
He struggles to keep his composure, sipping the marvelous smoky liquor. The inner door slides open upon a tunnel that leads into the bowels of the theater. He half expects a loathsome xeno facsimile to appear, but the smiling man who enters has a perfectly ordinary, even genial, appearanceЧexcept for the jarring steely intensity of his eyes. He appears to be in his mid-forties and has a narrow face that is slightly freckled. His curly auburn hair is cut very short. He is dressed in a neat business suit of oxblood worsted with a matching silk turtleneck. Grimacing at Drummond, he mops at one sleeve with a pocket square.
"Some kind of damned slime on the corridor wall got all over me. You wouldn't believe the geek collection hanging out back there in the green room!... Or perhaps you would."
Drummond chuckles, turns to his guest and says, "This is Ty Baldwin, head of Galapharma Security. He'll sit in on our conference."
"Glad to meet you, Citizen Frost." Baldwin heads directly to the bar. "Don't mind me. I'll set myself up. You two just go ahead with your business."
Indignation and suppressed fear. "We can't talk in front of him!"
"Certainly we can," Drummond says easily. "Come and sit down with me by the window. We can watch the show while you tell me about the Rampart board meeting." He turns up the music. On the stage outside, rings of dancing flame encircle the performers. The spiky entity has enfolded the woman in its multiple arms and penetrated her. She is bleeding from scores of small wounds.
He turns away in disgust, almost spilling his scotch as he sinks into one of the oversoft leather chairs. "I have some disappointing news. The Rampart Board of Directors turned down your acquisition tender again."
Alistair Drummond speaks so quietly that he can hardly be heard above the driving Spanish rhythms. "You stupid shit. You assured me that this time we'd win."
He forces himself to show no emotion. "The decision was extremely close. I was able to pass a resolution calling for a new vote at the end of six weeks. By then the ICS will have ruled on Rampart's application for Concern status. They're almost certain to turn us down. And then the board will have no alternative but to accept Galapharma's offerЧeven if it's lower than the present bid. In the long run this temporary setback will redound to your advantage."
Drummond grunts dubiously, failing to affirm the attempt at damage control. "Who was the holdout? Scranton and her mob of Small Stakeholders?"
"No, it was Katje Vanderpost. Her action was totally unexpected because Beth and I had worked very carefully to bring her around. I took a quiet poll yesterday before the meeting, when everyone but Katje had already arrived at the Sky Ranch. All the stakeholders except Simon Frost were in favor of the Gala merger this timeЧeven Thora Scranton. I suspect that Simon found out that Katje had been pressured. The old devil went to work on her as soon as her hopper landed. She caved in at the last minuteЧsaying she couldn't vote for the merger and betray her late brother's dream for the Starcorp." "Sodding sentimentality! Trust a damned woman to ignore logic. Her quarterstake would eventually double in value."
"In retrospect, I wonder if Katje's poor health might have influenced her decision more than any twaddle about Dirk Vanderpost's noble aspirations for Rampart." He pauses, swallowing a fair amount of his drink. "She could be thinking ahead. Intimations of mortality. Afraid that her children might contest her will and cut off the major source of funding for her precious Reversionist Party if Rampart merges with Galapharma." He utters a dry little laugh. "As might very well be the case! Asa tried to get her to set up a trust benefiting her pet causes, but she vacillatedЧthank God. I'll keep hammering away at her. We'll get her vote on the next go-around."
Drummond is obviously uninterested in these tactical details. His gaze is riveted on the increasingly lurid theatrics outside, and from time to time he moistens his pale, finely chiseled lips. "Just make bloody certain that she favors the merger next time."
"You have nothing to worry about. When the board meets again in six weeksЧ"