"Christopher Priest - The Discharge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

It was there in that sole fragment of my past: I remembered the first day I was in the cool semi-darkness
of the vault of the gallery in Jethra. I had pressed my trembling teenage fingers, my palms, my perspiring
forehead, many times to one of Acizzone's most notorious tactilist works: Ste-Augustinia Abandonai.

(I remembered the title! How?)

This woman was Ste-Augustinia. The reproduction she was fashioning was perfect. Not only was she an
exact replica but also the arrangement she had made of the sheets and pillowsтАФthere were folds of satin
glinting in the harsh light that exactly matched those in the painting. The long gleam of perspiration running
between her exposed breasts was one my lustful imaginings had drooled over a dozen times before.

I was so astonished by this discovery that for a moment I forgot why I was there. Much was immediately
and trivially clear to me: that she was not, for instance, the young woman I had seen removing the torn
T-shirt; nor was she any of the gaunt women in headsets who had seized me on the dance floor. She was
more maturely developed than the skinny girl in the T-shirt and to my eyes many times more beautiful
than any of the others. Also, but most confusingly, the deliberate way she had spread herself on the
smooth sheets of the bed was a conscious reference to an imagining only I had ever experienced. Or that
I remembered in isolation! This was a connection I could not explain or escape from. Was her pose just
a coincidence? Had they somehow read my mind?

A cathedral of dreams, the girl had said. That was impossible!

Surely it was impossible?

It was madness to think that this had been contrived. But the resemblance to the painting, whose details
were clear in my mind, was remarkable. Even so, the woman's real purpose was plain. She was yet a
whore.

I gazed at her in silence, trying to find out what I should think.

Then, without opening her eyes, the whore said, "If you only stand there to look, you must leave."

"IтАФI was searching for someone." She said nothing, so I added, "A young woman, like you."

"Take me now, or leave. I am not to be watched, not to be stared at. I am here to be ravished by you."

As far as I could tell she had not shifted position when she spoke to me. Even her lips had hardly
moved.

I gazed at her for a few more seconds, thinking that this was the time and this was the place where my
fantasies and my real life could meet, but finally I moved back from her. I was, in truth, frightened of her.
I was hardly more than an adolescent, almost completely inexperienced in sex. Not only that, though: in a
single unexpected instant I had been confronted in the flesh by one of Acizzone's temptresses.

Lamely, I did as she had told me and left.

There was little choice about where I should go. Two doors led into and out of the room: the one I had
entered by and another in the wall opposite. I stepped round the end of the huge bed and went to the
second door. "Ste-Augustinia" did not stir to watch me leave. As far as I could tell she had not so much
as glanced at me while I was there. I kept my face lowered, not wanting her to look at me, even as I was