"Robert Rankin - Brentford 05 - The Brentford Chainstore Mas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

never proved to be a big bird-puller, but it had served Dr Steven well at school for plays and suchlike, and
it did mean that he looked dignified. Which very few people ever do, when you come to think about it.
He looked dignified now, as he stood upon the rostrum in the lecture theatre of the Royal College of
Physicians at Henley-upon-Thames. And he was
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dignified. He had carriage, he had deportment, and he had a really splendid grey with white check
Boleskine tweed three-piece suit. It had the double-breasted flat-bottomed waistcoat with the flap on the
watch pocket and everything. Tinker used to wear one in Lovejoy, but his had been in the traditional green
with the yellow check.
Dr Steven looked the business. And he was the business. Top of the tree in the field of biochemistry.
The icing on the cake of DNA transfer symbiotics. And the ivory mouthpiece on the chromium-plated
megaphone of destiny when it came to genetic engineering. He was also very good to his dear little white-
haired old mother, a 33░ Grand Master in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Sprout and a piercing
enthusiast who boasted not only a Prince Albert but a double ampallang and apadravya.
Dr Steven sipped from a glass of liquid ether and gazed at the ranks of students with his cool grey eyes.
'And so,' he said. "What do we learn from these three short stories?'
The students gazed back at him, none, it seemed, inclined to offer comment.
'Come on, someone.' Dr Steven made an encouraging face in profile. By the law of averages, some of the
students must have been listening. Some might even have been interested. One might even have got the
point.
'Someone? Anyone?' Dr Steven eyed his audience once more. His gaze fell upon a young man with a
beard. His name was Paul Mason and he was a
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first-year student of genetics. Dr Steven pointed. 'Mason, what of you?'
The lad's eyes focused upon his tutor. 'Me, sir? Pardon?'
"What do we learn from these three short stories?'
'Not to believe the evidence of our own eyes?'
Dr Steven raised his grey eyebrows and lowered his off-white ears (a trick he had learned in Tibet).
Mason's eyes went blink, blink, blink. Tm very impressed,' said the doctor. Would you care to enlarge?'
Mason shook his hirsute head. 'I think I'll get out when I'm winning. If you don't mind.'
'All right. But just before you do, tell me this: were they true stories?'
Well, certainly the first one. Because I was the bearded passer-by in that.'
'And the other two?'
'I really couldn't say.'
Dr Steven lowered his eyebrows and raised his ears once more. 'Anybody else? Pushkin, what of you?'
Larry Pushkin, back for yet another year at the taxpayer's expense and a chap who had as much chance
of becoming the next Doctor Who as he had of becoming a medical doctor, was rooting about in his left
nostril with a biro. 'I'd rather not comment at this time, sir,' he said, in a Dalekian tone. 'I think a cockroach
has laid its eggs in my nose.'
'Anybody? Anybody at all?'
Those who could be bothered shook their heads. Most just stared on blankly. But then, somewhere

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near the back of the auditorium, a little hand went up.
'Who's that back there?' asked Dr Steven.
'It's me, sir. Molekemp, Harry Molekemp.'
'Why, Molekemp, this is an honour. You are out of your cosy bed somewhat early.'
Wednesday, sir. The landlady always vacuums my room on a Wednesday.'
'Rotten luck. And so, do you have some erudite comment to make?'
Yes I do, sir. I don't believe Mason. You told the shaggy dog story in the first person. If Mason had