"Kim Newman - Tomorrow Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


They first saw Tomorrow Town from across the Yorkshire Dales, nestled in lush
green and slate grey. The complex was a large-scale version of the sort of
back-garden space station that might have been put together by a talented
child inspired by Gerry Anderson and instructed by Valerie Singleton, using
egg boxes, toilet roll tubes, the innards of a broken wireless, pipe cleaners,
and a lot of silver spray-paint.
Hexagonal geodesic domes clustered in the landscape, a central space covered
by a giant canopy that looked like an especially aerodynamic silver circus
tent. Metallised roadways wound between trees and lakes, connecting the domes.
The light traffic consisted mostly of electric golf carts and one-person
hovercraft. A single hardy zenvol was struggling along on what looked like a
failed flying bicycle from 1895 but was actually a moped powered by wing-like
solar panels. It was raining gently, but the town seemed shielded by a
half-bubble climate control barrier that shimmered in midair.

A pylon held up three sun-shaped globes on a triangular frame. They radiated
light and, Richard suspected, heat. Where light fell, the greenery was
noticeably greener and thicker.

The monorail stopped outside the bubble, and settled a little clunkily.

"You may now change apparel," rasped the machine voice.

A compartment opened and clothes slid out on racks. The safety straps released
them from their seats.

Richard thought for a moment that the train had calculated from his long hair
that he was a Ms rather than a Mm, then realised the garment on offer was
unisex: a lightweight jumpsuit of semi-opaque polythene, with silver
epaulettes, pockets, knee- and elbow-patches, and modesty strips around the
chest and hips. The dangling legs ended in floppy-looking plastic boots, the
sleeves in surgeon's gloves.
"Was that 'may' a 'must'?" asked Vanessa.

"Best to go along with native customs," said Richard.

He turned his back like a gentleman and undressed carefully, folding and
putting away his clothes. Then he took the jumpsuit from the rack and stepped
into it, wiggling his feet down into the boots and fingers into the gloves. A
seam from crotch to neck sealed with velcro strips, but he was left with an
enormous swathe of polythene sprouting from his left hip like a bridal train.

"Like this," said Vanessa, who had worked it out.