"Dancers At The End Of Time - 03 - The End Of All Songs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

"But you told me," he murmured, "that you could not bear to consider Е There! Was that a spark? Or just a glint?"

"A glint," she said, "I think."

"We must not despair, Mrs. Underwood." His optimism was uncharacteristically strained. Again he struck ring against ring.

Around him were scattered the worn and broken fragments of fronds which he had earlier tried to rub together at her suggestion. As power-ring clacked on power-ring, Mrs. Underwood winced. In the silence of this Silurian (if it was Silurian) afternoon the sound had an effect upon her nerves she would not previously have credited; she had never seen herself as one of those over-sensitive women who populated the novels of Marie Corelli. She had always considered herself robust, singularly healthy. She sighed. Doubtless the boredom contributed something to her state of mind.

Jherek echoed her sigh. "There's probably a knack to it," he admitted. "Where are the trilobites?" He stared absently around him at the ground.

"Most of them have crawled back into the sea, I think," she told him coldly. "There are two brachiopods on your coat." She pointed.

"Aha!" Almost affectionately he plucked the molluscoidea from the dirty black cloth of his frock-coat. Doubtfully, he peered into the shells.

Mrs. Underwood licked her lips. "Give them to me," she commanded. She produced a hat-pin.

His head bowed, Pilate confronting the Pharisees, he complied.

"After all," she told him as she poised the pin, "we are only missing garlic and butter and we should have a meal fit for a French gourmet." The utterance seemed to depress her. She hesitated.

"Mrs. Underwood?"

"Should we say grace, I wonder?" She frowned. "It might help. I think it's the colourЕ"

"Too beautiful," he said eagerly. "I follow you. Who could destroy such loveliness?"

"That greenish, purplish hue pleases you?"

"Not you?"

"Not in food, Mr. Carnelian."

"Then in what?"

"OhЕ" Vaguely. "In Ч no, not even in a picture. It brings to mind the excesses of the Pre-Raphaelites. A morbid colour."

"Ah."

"It might explain your affinitiesЕ" She abandoned the subject. "If I could conquerЕ"

"A yellow one?" He tried to tempt her with a soft-shelled creature he had just discovered in his back pocket. It clung to his finger; there was the sensation of a kiss.

She dropped molluscs and hat-pin, covered her face with her hands and began to weep.

"Mrs. Underwood!" He was at a loss. He stirred the pile of fronds with his foot. "Perhaps if I were to use a ring as a prism and direct the rays of the sun through it we couldЕ"

There came a loud squeak and he wondered at first if one of the creatures were protesting. Another squeak, from behind him. Mrs. Underwood removed her fingers to expose red eyes which now widened in surprise.

"Hi! I say Ч Hi, there!"