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

Vanessa snapped her fingers.

"Ah-ha. There's your culprit. In every sci-fi film I've ever seen, the computer goes power-mad and starts killing people off. Big Thinks probably wants to take over the world."

"The late Mm Zhoule would cringe to hear you say that, Vanessa. He'd never have deigned to use such a hackneyed, unlikely premise in a story. A computer is just a heuristic abacus. Big Thinks can beat you at chess, solve logic problems, cut a pop record, and make the monorail run on time, but it hasn't got sentience, a personality, a motive, or, most importantly, arms. You might as well suspect the fridge-freezer or the pop-up toaster."

"If you knew my pop-up toaster better, you'd feel differently. It sits there, shining sneakily, plotting perfidy. The jug-kettle is in on it, too. There's a conspiracy of contraptions."

"Now you're being silly."

"Trust me, Richard, it'll be the Brain Machine. Make sure to check its alibi."

"I'll bear that in mind."




╖ ╖ ╖ ╖ ╖


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.

The swathe went over the right shoulder in a toga arrangement, passing under an epaulette, clipping on in a couple of places, and falling like a waist-length cape.

She had also found a pad of controls in the left epaulette, which activated drawstrings and pleats that adjusted the garment to suit individual body type. They both had to fiddle to get the suits to cope with their above-average height, then loosen and tighten various sections as required. Even after every possible button had been twisted every possible way, Richard wore one sleeve tight as sausage skin while the other was loose and wrinkled as a burst balloon.

"Maybe it's a futopian fashion," suggested Vanessa, whoЧof courseЧlooked spectacular, shown off to advantage by the modesty strips. "All the dashing zenvols are wearing the one-loose-one-tight look this new century."

"Or maybe it's just aggravated crackpottery."

She laughed.