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

her way around the Solar System on a cut-price non-U grand tour: laboring
as a courtesy masseuse in Japan and a topiarist on Ceres while saving up
the price of her next interplanetary jaunt. Her maternity factory or mother or
whoever was sending her a small allowance to help pay her way, I think, but
she was having to work as well to make ends meet, a frightfully non-U thing
for a cute little clankie princess to have to do. Our eyes met over the open
breech of her silver-chased Purdey over-and-under EMP cannon, and as
soon as I saw her delicately wired eyelashes and the refractive sheen on
her breasts, simultaneously naked and deliciously inaccessible in the
vacuum, I knew I had to have her. тАЬWhy, I do declare IтАЩm out of capacitors!тАЭ
she fluttered at me, and I bent over backward to offer her my heart, and the
keys to the guest room.

There is something more than a little bit perverse about a squish who
chases clankie skirt: even, one might suppose, something of the invert
about them; but I can cope with sly looks in public, and our butch/femme
U/non-U tuple is sufficiently orthodox to merely Outrage the Aunts, rather
than crossing the line and causing Offence. If she showed more squish
while being less non-U, I suppose it would be too risqu├й to carry on in
publicтАФbut I digress. I trust you can sympathize with my confusion? What
else is a healthy boy to do when his lusts turn in a not-quite-respectable
direction?

Of course, I was younger and rather more foolish when I first clapped
eyes on the dame, and weтАЩve had our ups and downs since then. She was,
to be fair, unaware of my unfortunate neurohormonal problems: and I wasnтАЩt
entirely clear on the costs, both mechanical and emotional, of maintaining a
clankie doxie in the style to which she would want to become accustomed.
Nor did I expect her to be so enthusiastic a proponent of personality
patches, or so prone to histrionic fits and thermionic outrages. I expect I
had some surprises for her, too. But we mostly seemed to bump along all
rightтАФuntil that last pre-drop walk-out, and her failure to turn up at the drop
zone.

****

8. Jeremy Runs Amok; A Dreadful Discovery before Dinner

Among the various manners of recovering from the neurasthenic
tension that accompanies a drop, I must admit that the one old Abdul had
laid on for us took first prize for decadent (that means good) taste. ItтАЩs hard
to remain stressed out while reclining on a bed of silks in a pleasure palace
on Mars, with nubile young squishies to drop pre-fermented grapes through
your open lips, your very own mouth-boy to keep the hookah smoldering,
and a clankie band plangently plucking its various organs in the far corner of
the room.

Dancers whirled and wiggled and undulated across the stage at the
front of the hall, while a rather fetching young squishie lad in a gold lam├й
loincloth and peacock feather turban waited at my left shoulder to keep my