"Gene Wolfe - Talk of Mandrakes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

"My presence offends you," Selim said. "We learned to be less squeamish on
the ship, believe me. But I will go. You have an hour."

Peak watched him put down the microphone, turn, and stride away. The metal
door closed behind him with a clang that was faintly audible through the temperglass.
Peak could not hear, could only imagine, the click of a bolt.

Her fingers had found what they sought. He struck her and she cowered, but
did not let go. In a rushing stream of irrelevant thoughts he found, never before like
this. Soon he was pouring himself into her, his resolve melting in the primal rut, the
overpowering urge to which she seemed as enslaved as he. His hand clasped his
waist, drove her loins down upon his own.

Then he felt her tendrils within him, roots as fine as hairs probing and
growing. Without the least thought of the mandrake, he screamed as he was
dragged--screamed, though there was no one but she to hear him.
 ***

The dryad who rose to greet Selim was grossly obese, her thighs swollen,
breasts like melons above her bulging belly. A hundred and twenty kilos, Selim
decided: two hundred and sixty pounds at least, and perhaps more. "Enough?" he
asked.

She shook her head, growing visibly taller.

He pressed a button, raising the temperglass. "You're integrating the
information he carried, I assume."

She shrugged; and one hand rubbed her belly, which shook at her touch.

"There's still the man who brought him. I'll call the gate--the guards should
have him there. I'll make the call, and tell them to get him. But you will have to speak
if you want him. I trust you understand. You will have to tell him you're my
secretary. I'll adjust the fone so that he sees only your face. Tell him--and
them--that he's allowed in here." Selim hesitated. "Tell him to drive in, to bring his
car."

He thought of Earth as he had seen her since the ship returned, of the festering
cities and poisoned oceans, of her enslaved billions.

"Let me speak to Mister Boardman, please."

In the age to come...

The dryad's face was twice the size of his. He adjusted the fone to
compensate as she bent, a three-meter giantess, to speak into it. For an instant he
envied the owner, at whom she smiled.

"Say," she said. "You're cute!"