"Paul Preuss - Venus Prime 1 - Breaking Strain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

This morning she was somewhere else. The room was high-ceilinged, layered with a centuryтАЩs


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaub...0-%20Venus%20Prime%201%20-%20Breaking%20Strain.html (11 of 182)23-12-2006 18:54:42
 ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S VENUS PRIME: VOLUME I

accumulation of white enamel, and its tall windows, hung with dusty lace, were fitted with panes of
imperfect glass whose pinhole bubbles refocused the sun into golden liquid galaxies. She didnтАЩt know
where she was, exactly, but that was nothing new. They must have brought her here in the night. She
would find her way around, as she had in many other strange places.

She sneezed twice and briefly wondered if she were catching a cold. The stale taste of her mouth
unpleasantly grew to dominate her sensations; she could taste what must have been last nightтАЩs dinner as
vividly as if it were in front of her, except that all the flavors were here at once, green beans mingling
with custard, a fragment of rice throbbing with odors of gunny sack, crumbs of ground beef stewing in
saliva . . . Vaguely apprehended formulas of amines and esters and carbohydrates danced through her
mind with a slippery, tickly quality that was familiar although she had no idea what they signified.

She rose quickly from the bed, put on gown and slippersтАУshe merely assumed they were hersтАУand went
off in search of someplace to scrub her teeth. The smell in the drafty hall was overwhelming, wax and
urine and ammonia and bile and turpentineтАУinsistent odors and their accompanying, ungraspable
mathematical analogues summoning ghosts, the ghosts of vanished supplicants and benefactors, workers
and inmates of this building, and their visitors and keepers, everyone who had passed this way for a
century. She sneezed again and again, and finally the clamorous stench subsided.

She found the bathroom without any trouble. Peering at herself in the mirror on the wooden cabinet, she
was suddenly thrust out of herselfтАУher image appeared to enlargeтАУuntil she was staring at an immensely
magnified view of her own eye. Dark brown, liquid at its surface, it was an eye of glassy perfection. At
the same time she could still see her ordinary reflection in the glass; the giant eye was superimposed
upon the familiar face. She closed one eyeтАУshe saw only her face. She closed the otherтАУshe was staring
into the liquid depths of an immense open pupil. The blackness within was unfathomable.

Her right eye seemed to have something . . . wrong? . . . with it.

She blinked a couple of times and the double exposure vanished. Her face was itself. Again it occurred
to her to brush her teeth. After several monotonous minutes the vibrating brush massaged her into
dreaminess. . . .


The helicopter made a loud thrumming outside, soundly rattling the windows as it landed on the lawn.
The staff scurried hurriedly about; the unexpected arrival of a helicopter generally meant an inspection.

When the doctor came upstairs from his apartment he found one of the directorтАЩs aides waiting in his
office. The doctor was bothered but tried not to show it.

тАЬWe promised you the director would get back to you,тАЭ said the aide. He was a small fellow and
scrupulously polite, with bright orange hair curled tightly against his skull.