"Charles Stross - Trunk and Disorderly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

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6. Pleasure Domes of Mars: A Primer

I arrived on Mars somewhat rattled, but physically none the worse for
wear. Miss Feng had rustled up a burnoose, djellaba, and antique polyester
two-piece for me from somewhere, so that I looked most dashing,
absolutely in character as a highly authentic Leisure Suit Larry of Arabia. I
tried to inveigle her into costume, but she demurred: тАЬI am your butler, Sir,
not a party-goer in my own capacity. It wouldnтАЩt be right,тАЭ she said, tucking
an emergency vial of after-shave in my breast pocket. ItтАЩs hard to argue with
such certainty, although I have a feeling that she only said it because she
didnтАЩt approve of the filmy harem pants and silver chainmail brassiere IтАЩd
brought along in hopes of being able to tempt Laura into them. Edgestar we
dressed in a rug and trained to spit on demand: he could be my camel, just
as long as nobody expected him to pass champagne through his reactorтАЩs
secondary coolant circuit. Jeremy emerged from storage pallid and
shaking, so Miss Feng and I improvised a leash and decided to introduce
him as the White Elephant. Not that a real White Elephant would have
menaced the world with such a malign, red-rimmed glareтАФor have smelled
so unpleasantly fustyтАФbut you canтАЩt have everything.

A word about AbdulтАЩs digs. Abdul al-Matsumoto, younger brother of
the Emir of Mars, lives in a madly gothic palace on the upper slopes of
Elysium Mons, thirteen kilometers above the dusty plain. Elysium Mons is
so big youтАЩd hardly know you were on a mountain, so at some time in the
preceding five centuries one of AbdulтАЩs more annoying ancestors
vandalized the volcano by carving out an areophysical folly, a half-scale
model of Mount Everest protruding from the rim of the caldera. Thus,
despite the terraforming that has turned the crumbly old war god into a bit of
a retirement farm these days, AbdulтАЩs pleasure dome really is a dome, of
the old-fashioned do not break glass, do not let air out (unless you want
to die) variety.

Ground Control talked Miss Feng down into the marina below the
sparkly glass facets of the dome, then sent a crawler tunnel to lock on to
the door before old Edgy could leap out onto the surface and test his
vacuum seals.

The door opened with a clunk. тАЬLetтАЩs go, what?тАЭ I asked Jeremy.
Jeremy sat down, swiveled one jaundiced eye toward me, and emitted a
plaintive honk. тАЬBe like that, then,тАЭ I muttered, bending to pick him up. Dwarf
mammoths are heavy, even in Martian gravity, but I managed to tuck him
under my arm and, thus encumbered, led the way down the tube toward
AbdulтАЩs reception.
 If you are ever invited to a party by a supreme planetary overlordтАЩs
spoiled playboy of a younger brother, you can expect to get tiresomely lost
unless you remember to download a map of the premises into your
monocle first. AbdulтАЩs humble abode boasts 2428 rooms, of which 796 are
bedrooms, 915 are bathrooms, 62 are offices, and 147 are dungeons.
(There is even a choice of four different Planetary Overlord Command