"Williams, Walter Jon - Metropolitan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

1

A burning woman stalks along the streets. Ten stories tall, naked body a
whirling holocaust of fire. Terrified people on Bursary Street crumple into
carbon at her passing, leaving behind only black char curled into fetal
shapes. The heat she radiates is so powerful that structures burst into flame
as she passes. A storm of paper, sucked out of buildings by uncontrolled
drafts, spiral toward her and are consumed. Uncontrolled rivers of flame pour
from her fingertips. Windows blast inward at her keening, at the eerie,
nerve-scraping wail that pours from her insubstantial, fiery throat.

In a city that girdles the world, all-devouring fire is the worst thing
imaginable.

Aiah hears the sound first, a scream that raises the fine hairs on the back of
her neck. She gazes in shock out of the office lounge and sees the woman turn
the corner onto the Avenue of the Exchange; and for a moment she sees the
woman tripled, multiplied by the mirror glass of the Bursary Building and the
Old Intendancy, and for a horrified moment gazes into three burning faces,
three hollow sets of flaming eyes, three expressions of agonized torment in
which she can read the woman's last remnant of blasted humanity begging for
help, for an end to pain ...

Aiah turns to run and the window blows inward with a breath of wind that sears
Aiah's neck and flings her to the floor, and at the same moment she hears the
first shriek from Telia's baby and the foolish, urgent ring of the phoneтАФ

The burning woman's scream rises to Aiah's throat.



GRADE A PLASM LEAK IN FINANCIAL DISTRICT.

143 DEAD. 2000 INJURED.

PLASM AUTHORITY INVESTIGATION ANNOUNCED.

DETAILS ON THE WIRE.

As the escalator lifts Aiah from the blue passageways of the pneuma station
the liquid-silver words track across the sky, telling her things she regrets
she already knows. Between the worn metal treads of the escalator steps lie
drifts of ash, a percentage of which may be human. On the surface, a cold wind
blows black cinders between the sluicegates of buildings.

IS YOUR FAMILY SAFE? DO YOU CARRY ENOUGH INSURANCE?

More words, addressed in this instance to a more local audience, crawl in
mirrored image up the gold glass wall of the Bursary Building. Insurance
underwriters hawk their wares from hastily assembled booths on the sidewalk.