"John Varley - Gaea 2 - Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

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supported signs with old-fashioned gold lettering on them, pointing the way to various parts of
the building, giving history and details in small print.
Near the center of the courtyard was a brass flagpole. At the top a flag whipped in the stiff
breeze coming through the Golden Gate: centered in a field of black, a six-spoked golden wheel. It
was impossible to look up at that flag without having one's eye drawn farther, to the imposing
sight of the bridge span hanging unsupported in space.
This was Fort Point, constructed in the nineteenth century to protect the entrance to the
Bay. All its cannons were gone now. It would have been a redoubtable defense against an enemy from
the sea, but none had ever come. Fort Point had never fired a shot in anger.
He wondered if the builders had thought their creation would last two hundred and fifty
years, structurally unchanged from the day the last brick was laid. He suspected they had, but
would have been dumbfounded to stand where he now stood, to look up at the orange metal of the
bridge arching so insolently over the brick behemoth.
Actually, the bridge had not fared nearly so well. After it had been brought down in the
quake of '45, it had been fifteen years before a new roadway was slung between the undamaged
towers.
Chris'fer took a deep breath and shoved his hands into his pockets. He had been trying to put
off what he had come here for, terrified of being turned down. But it had to be done. There was a
sign indicating his direction. It said:
THIS WAY TO THE GAEAN EMBASSY
THE AMBASSADOR IS [IN]
The word "in" was on a dirty piece of cardboard hanging from a nail.
He followed the pointing hand through a door and into a hallway. Interior doors opened right
and left into bare brick rooms. The Gaean Embassy held nothing but a metal desk and some hay bales
stacked against a wall. Chris'fer entered, then saw there was a Titanide sprawled behind the desk.
She wore a comic-opera uniform on her human torso, festooned with brass and braid. Her horse
body was palomino, and so were the hands and forearms that protruded from her jacket sleeves. She
was apparently asleep, snoring like a chain saw. She embraced a gold military shako with a long
white plume, her head thrown back to expose a tawny palomino throat. There was an empty liquor
bottle sitting tilted in the hat, and another beside her left hind leg.
"Is somebody out there?" The voice came from behind an interior door marked Her Excellency,
Dulcimer (Hypomixolydian Trio) Cantata. "Tirarsi, show them in, will you?" There was a tremendous
sneeze, followed by a snort.
Chris'fer went to the door, opened it hesitantly, and stuck his head in. He saw another
Titanide sitting behind a desk.
"Your... ah ... she appears to be passed out."
The Titanide snorted again. "She's a he," Ambassador Cantata said. "And it ain't unusual.
She's spun so far off the wheel she doesn't even remember how it turned."
"Spinning off the wheel" was rapidly replacing "falling off the wagon" and other euphemisms
for a drinking problem. Titanides brought to Earth were notorious drunks. It was not just the
alcohol-which they had known before they left Gaea-but the maguey plant. Its fermented, distilled
nectar was so adored by Titanides that Mexico was one of the few Earth nations with a Gaean export
trade.
"Come in, then," the ambassador said. "Take a seat over there. I'll be with you in a minute,
but first I have to see where Tzigane got to." She started to rise.
"If you mean a sort of quilted Titanide, she jumped into the Bay."
The ambassador froze with her hindquarters nearly up and her hands flat on the desk. Slowly
her rump settled again.