"Moorcock, Michael - Breakfast in the Ruins (v2.5)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

"You must show them to me sometime."
"I'll show them to you tomorrow, if you like."
She nodded. "Well, sometime ... Goodnight, Butterfly."
"Goodnight, cook."
He climbed the back stairs high up to his room in the roof. The two houseboys were already asleep. Quietly, he lit his lamp and got out his case of butterflies. He would be needing another case soon.
Smiling tenderly, he delicately stroked their wings with the tip of his little finger.
For over an hour he looked at his butterflies and then he got into his bed and pulled the sheet over him. He lay staring at the eaves and thinking about the blue and yellow butterfly he would try to catch tomorrow.
There was a sound outside. He ignored it. It was a familiar sound. Feet creeping along the passage. Either one of the housemaids was on her way out to keep an assignation with her follower, or her follower had boldly entered the house. Karl turned over and tried to go to sleep.
The door of his room opened.
He turned onto his back again and peered through the gloom. A white figure was standing there, panting. It was a man in pajamas and a dressing gown. The man paused for a moment and then crept towards Karl's bed.
"There you are, you little beauty," whispered the man. Karl recognized the voice as the one he had heard earlier talking about the Boers.
"What do you want, sir?" Karl sat up in bed.
"Eh? Damn! Who the devil are you? "
"The punch-boy, sir."
"I thought this was where that little fat maid slept. What the devil!"
There was a crunch and the man grunted in pain, hopping about the room. "Oh, I've had enough of this!"
Now the other two boys were awake. Their eyes stared in horror at the hopping figure. Perhaps they thought it was a ghost.
The white man blundered back out of the room, leaving the door swinging on its hinges. Karl heard him go down the passage and descend the stairs.
Karl got up and lit the lamp.
He saw his butterfly case where he had left it beside the bed. The white man had stepped on it and broken the glass. All the butterflies were broken, too.
- Won't it wash off? asks Karl.
- Do you want it to come off? Don't you feel more free?
- Free?

What Would You Do? (4)
You are escaping from an enemy. You have climbed along the top of a sloping slate roof, several stories up. It is raining. You slip and manage to hang on to the top of the roof. You try to get back, but your feet slip on the wet tiles. Below you, you can see a lead gutter. Will you risk sliding down the roof while there is still some strength left in your fingers and hope that you can catch the gutter as you go down and thus work your way to safety? Or will you continue to try to pull yourself back to the top of the roof? There is also the chance that the gutter will break under your weight when you grab it. Perhaps, also, your enemy has discovered where you are and is coming along the roof towards you.

5

Liberation in Havana: 1898: Hooks "You may fire when ready, Gridley."
COMMODORE DEWEY, May 1st, 1898.

- There, it's dried nicely. The black man runs his nail down Karl's chest. - Are you religious, Karl?
- Not really.
- Do you believe in incarnation? Or what you might call "transincarnation", I suppose.
- I don't know what you're talking about.
The nail traces a line across his stomach. He gasps.
The black man bares his teeth in a sudden smile.
- Oh, you do really. What's this? Willful ignorance? How many people today suffer from that malaise!
- Leave me alone.
- Alone?
Karl is ten, the son of a small manufacturer of cigars in Havana, Cuba. His grandfather had the cigar factory before his father. He will inherit the factory from his father.
- Yes-alone... Oh, God!
...The black man's tone becomes warmly sympathetic. What's up?
Karl looks at him in surprise, hearing him speak English slang easily for the first time. The black man is changing.
Karl shudders. - You've - you've Ч made me cold...
- Then we'd better tuck you into bed, old chap.
- You've corrupted me.
- Corrupted? Is that what you think turns me on? The Corruption of Ignorance! The black man throws back his handsome head and laughs heartily.
Karl is ten...