"MIchael Moorcock - The Dancers At The End Of Time 01 - An Alien Heat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

slender arm, heavy with brown brocade, and touched her forehead with her fingertips.
"I think so." He disseminated his own pillows. "I have a great liking for the Duke of Queens."
His lips pursed a trifle, Jherek Carnelian pondered the pink sea. "Even if I do not always appreciate
his colour sense."
He turned and walked over the crushed bone beach to his aircar. He clambered into the cabin.
"All aboard, my strong, my sweet, Iron Orchid!"
She chuckled and reached up to him.
From the footplate he reached down, seized her waist and swung her aboard.
"Off to Pasadena!"
He sounded his whistle.
"Shuffle off to Buffalo!"
Responding to the sonic signal, the little locomotive took magnificently to the air, shunting up the
sky, with lovely, lime-coloured steam puffing from its smokestack and from beneath its wheels.
"Oh, they gave him his augurs at Racine-Virginia," sang Jherek Carnelian, donning a scarlet and
cloth-of-gold engineer's cap, "saying steam-up, you're way behind time! It ain't '98, it's old '97. You got
to get on down that old Nantucket line!"
The Iron Orchid settled back in her seat of plush and ermine (an exact reproduction, she
understood, of the original) and watched her son with amusement as he opened the firedoor and
shovelled in the huge black diamonds which he had made specially to go with the train and which, though
of no particular use in fuelling the aircar, added aesthetic texture to the recreation.
"Where do you find all these old songs, Carnelian, my own?"
"I came across a cache of 'platters,' " he told her, wiping honest sweat from his face with a silk rag.
The train swept rapidly over a sea and a range of mountains. "A form of sound-storage of the same
period as the original of this aircar. A million years old, at least, though there's some evidence that they,
themselves, are reproductions of other originals. Kept in perfect condition by a succession of owners."
He slammed the firedoor shut and discarded the platinum shovel, joining her upon the couch and
staring down at the quaintly moulded countryside which Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, had
begun to build a while ago and then abandoned.
It was not elegant. In fact it was something of a mess. Two-thirds of a hill, in the fashion of the 91st
century post-Aryan landscapers, supported a snake-tree done after the Saturnian manner but left
uncoloured; part of an 11th century Gothic ruin stood beside a strip of river of the Bengali Empire period.
You could see why she had decided not to finish it, but it seemed to Jherek that it was a pity she had not
bothered to disseminate it. Someone else would, of course, sooner or later.
"Carrie Joan," he sang, "she kept her boiler going. Carrie Joan, she filled it full of wine. Carrie Joan
didn't stop her rowing. She had to get to Brooklyn by a quarter-past nine!"
He turned to the Iron Orchid.
"Do you like it? The quality of the platters isn't all it could be, but I think I've worked out all the
words now."
"Is that what you were doing last year?"
She raised her fine eyebrows. "I heard the noises coming from your Hi-Rise." She laughed. "And I
thought it was to do with sex." She frowned. "Or animals." She smiled. "Or both."
The locomotive began to spiral down, hooting, towards Jherek's ranch. The ranch had taken the
place of the Hi-Rise. A typical building of the 19th century, done in fibafome and thatch, each corner of
its veranda roof was supported by a wooden Indian, some forty feet high. Each Indian had a magnificent
pearl, twelve inches in diameter, in his turban, and a beard of real hair. The Indians were the only
extravagant detail in the otherwise simple building.
The locomotive landed in the corral and Jherek, whose interest in the ancient world had, off and on,
sustained itself for nearly two years, held out his hand to help the Iron Orchid disembark. For a moment
she hesitated as she attempted to remember what she must do. Then she grasped his hand and jumped to
the ground crying: