"Cordwainer Smith - Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Cordwainer)

Virginia's mind blazed at me, full of revulsion, The cat-girl. She is going to touch met
She twisted. My right arm was suddenly empty. I saw the gleam of a golden gown flash over the edge, even in the dim light. I reached with my mind, and I caught her cry:
"Paul, Paul, I love you. Paul . . . help me!"
The thoughts faded as her body dropped.
The someone else was C'mell, whom we had first met in the corridor.
I came to get you both, she thought at me; not that the "birds cared about her.
What have the birds got to do with it?
You saved them. You saved their young, when the red-topped man was killing them all. All of us have been worried about what you true people would do to us when you were free. We found out. Some of you are bad and kill other kinds of life. Others of you are good and protect life.
Thought I, is that all there is to good and bad?
Perhaps I should not have left myself off guard. People did not have to understand fighting, but the homunculi did. They were bred amidst battle and they served through troubles. C'mell, cat-girl that she was,
caught me on the chin with a pistonlike fist. She had no anesthesia, and the only way-cat or no cat-that she could carry me across the cahles in the "typhoon" was to have me unconscious and relaxed.
I awakened in my own room. I felt very well indeed. The robot-doctor was there. Said he:
Tou've had a shock. I've already reached the suhcommissioner of the Instrumentality, and I can erase the memories of the last full day, if you want me to."
His expression was pleasant.
Where was the racing wind? The air falling like stone around us? The water driving where no weather machines controlled it? Where was the golden gown and the wild fear-hungry face of Maximilien Macht? ,
I thought these things, but the robot-doctor, not being telepathic, caught none of it. I stared hard at him.
"Where," I cried, "is my own true love?"
Robots cannot sneer, but this one attempted to do so. "The naked cat-girl with the blazing hair? She left to get some clothing."
I stared at him.
His fuddy-duddy little machine mind cooked up its own nasty little thoughts, "I must say, sir, you 'free people' change very fast indeed . . ."
Who argues with a machine? It wasn't worth answering him.
But that other machine? Twenty-one minutes. How could that work out? How could it have known? I did not want to argue with that other machine either. It must have been a very powerful left-over machine-perhaps something used in ancient wars. I had no intention of finding out. Some people might call it a god. I call it nothing. I do not need "fear" and I do not propose to go back to Alpha Ralpha Boulevard again.
But hear, oh heart of mine!-how can you ever visit the cafe" again?
C'mell came in and the robot-doctor left.
"RATHER loosely inspired by some of the magical and conspiratorial scenes of The Romance of Three Kingdoms," a 14th-century work by Lo Kuan-chung, according to Smith himself. C'mell herself was inspired by Cat Melanie, one of the felines in Smith's household. She and Lord Jestocost, of course, both figure later in the events of his novel Norstrilia . . .
THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL
She got the which of the what-she-did, Hid the bell with a lolot, she did, But she fell in love with a hominid. Where is the which of the what-she-did?
from THE BALLAD OP LOST c'MBLL
SHE WAS a girlygirl and they were true men, the lords of creation, but she pitted her wits against them and she won. It had never happened before, and it is sure never to happen again, but she did win. She was not even of human extraction. She was cat-derived, though human in outward shape, which explains the C in front of her name. Her father's name was C'mackintosh and her name C'mell. She won her tricks against the lawful and assembled lords of the Instrumentality.
It all happened at Earthport, greatest of buildings, smallest of cities, standing twenty-five kilometers high at the western edge of the Smaller Sea of Earth.
Jestocost had an office outside the fourth valve.
1
Jestocost liked the morning sunshine, while most of the other lords of Instrumentality did not, so that he had no trouble in keeping the office