"Robert F. Young - In Saturn's Rings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Ephesus had been famous. But reading about them was one thing тАФ seeing them graphically depicted
was quite another.
Hera was looking at him questioningly. Light emanating from the obscene murals gave her flesh a
reddish cast, deepened the darkness of her eyes: He looked over her shoulder, saw the huge sleeping
dais with its scarlet pillows and black counterpane. He heard the hoarseness of his breathing and he felt
the pounding of his heart, and he knew all at once that in order to possess her he would betray far more
than what Zeus IX represented; that, like all loyalties built on self-deception, his loyalty to the House of
Christopoulos was worthless.
He stood there helplessly as it came tumbling down around him. "I'll bring the capsule down
whenever you wish," he said.
"Yes," she answered absently, as though she had heard the words long before he said them. And
then, "If you will wait outside, I will have my handmaidens prepare me." She clapped her hands.
Trembling, he stepped out onto the mezzanine. Helen of Troy and Hecuba appeared, side by side,
entered the room and closed the door behind them.
His trembling increased. To relax his thoughts he walked over to the marble railing and looked down
into the great room below. At the fountain and the tables and the benches. At the columns, at the android
standing at the base of each, as though chained. At Ictinus and Callicrates, the architects who had built
the original Parthenon; at Phidias, the sculptor who had supervised the building; at Zeno, Polyclitus,
Praxiteles, Homer, Parmenides, Leucippos, Aristophanes, Sophocles, Euripides, AeschylusтАФ
Aeschylus was looking up at him, eyes flashing on and off.
Now the android left his column, crossed the floor and ascended the stairs. He walked over to where
Matthew was standing and touched his arm. "Come," he said, "I will show you so that you will believe."
Matthew was annoyed, "Show me what?"
"I will show you," Aeschylus repeated. "Come."
The blink-rate of the eye-tubes was alarmingly high. What illogicality had this old "man" stumbled
upon that could have upset him so? Suddenly curious, Matthew said, "All rightтАФ but you'll have to
hurry."

Aeschylus led him down the mezzanine to an imposing door at the farther end. The door was
locked, but Aeschylus produced a ring of keys from a pocket in his tunic and inserted one of them into
the anachronistic lock. A moment later, the door swung obediently open. Following the old "man" into the
room beyond, Matthew found himself in a large bath.



It put Hera's to shame. The concave wall was one continuous mural of an Elysian countryside, and it
blended imperceptibly into a ceiling-mural of a cloud-scattered sky. So vivid was the illusion of depth that
for a moment he thought he had stepped across space and time to ancient Greece. Real grass grew
beneath his feet. The bath became a quiet pool on the bank of which he stood. Two life-size statues
stood on the opposite bank тАФone Pan, the other, Syrinx. Syrinx was running away, and Pan was in
ithyphallic pursuit.
Matthew looked down at the pool at his feet. It was perhaps nine feet in diameter and had a
maximum depth of about five feet. Its concave bottom consisted of white marble. As he gazed into the
bluish water, he thought he saw a flash of silver. Reflection? He wondered. Peering closer, he saw other
flashes. He identified the shining flickering shapes as Venerian piranhas then, and suddenly sober, he
drew back. The water was alive with them!
Why would any man even a rich man who could afford to be eccentric тАФ want to keep Venerian
piranhas in his bath?
 Aeschylus was pointing toward the bottom of the pool. Stepping forward, Matthew looked down
into the strange blue water once again тАФ