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

me what you have been doing."
She looked up at him, her eyes shining. "I've been making babies, dearest. Hundreds of them!" She
giggled. "I couldn't stop. Cherubs, mainly. I built a little aviary for them, too. And I made them trumpets
to blow and harps to pluck and I composed the sweetest music you ever heard. And they played it!"
"I should like to hear it."
"What a shame." She was genuinely upset that she had not thought of him, her favourite, her only
real son. "I'm making microscopes now. And gardens, of course, to go with them. And tiny beasts. But
perhaps I'll do the cherubs again some day. And you shall hear them, then."
"If I am not being 'virtuous,' " he said archly.
"Ah, now I begin to understand the meaning. If you have an impulse to do something тАФ you do the
opposite. You want to be a man, so you become a woman. You wish to fly somewhere, so you go
underground. You wish to drink, but instead you emit fluid. And so on. Yes, that's splendid. You'll set a
fashion, mark my words. In a month, blood of my blood, everyone will be virtuous. And what shall we
do then? Is there anything else? Tell me!"
"Yes. We could be 'evil' тАФ or 'modest' тАФ or 'lazy' тАФ or 'poor' тАФ or, oh, I don't know тАФ
'worthy.' There's hundreds."
"And you would tell us how to be it?"
"WellтАж" He frowned. "I still have to work out exactly what's involved. But by that time I should
know a little more."
"We'll all be grateful to you. I remember when you taught us Lunar Cannibals. And Swimming. And
тАФ what was it тАФ Flags?"
"I enjoyed Flags," he said. "Particularly when My Lady Charlotina made that delicious one which
covered the whole of the western hemisphere. In metal cloth the thickness of an ant's web. Do you
remember how we laughed when it fell on us?"
"Oh, yes!" She clapped her hands. "Then Lord Jagged built a Flag Pole on which to fly it and the
pole melted so we each made a Niagara to see who could do the biggest and used up every drop of
water and had to make a whole new batch and you went round and round in a cloud raining on
everyone, even on Mongrove. And Mongrove dug himself an underground Hell, with devils and
everything, out of that book the time-traveller brought us, and he set fire to Bulio Himmler's 'Bunkerworld
2' which he didn't know was right next door to him and Bulio was so upset he kept dropping atom
bombs on Mongrove's Hell, not knowing that he was supplying Mongrove with all the heat he needed!"
They laughed heartily.
"Was it really three hundred years ago?" said Jherek nostalgically.
He plucked a leaf from the aspidistra and reflectively began to chew it. A little blue juice ran down
his beige chin.
"I sometimes think," he continued, "that I haven't known a better sequence of events. It seemed to
go on and on, one thing leading neatly to another. Mongrove's Hell, you know, also ruined my menagerie,
except for one creature that escaped and broke most of his devils. Everything went up, in my menagerie,
otherwise. Because of Himmler, really. Or because of Lady Charlotina. Who's to say?"
He discarded the leaf.
"It's strange," he said. "I haven't kept a menagerie since. I mean, almost everyone has some sort of
menagerie, even you, Iron Orchid."
"Mine is so small. Compare it with the Everlasting Concubine's, even."
"You've three Napoleons. She has none."
"True. But I'm honestly not sure whether any one of them is genuine."
"It is hard to tell," he agreed.
"And she does have an absolutely genuine Attila the Hun. The trouble she went to, too, to make that
particular trade. But he's such a bore."
"I think that's why I stopped collecting," he said. "The genuine items are often less interesting than
the fakes."