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

III

The building was less than a mile distant from the Haven, but the wind and the ice made the going
arduous. Only the heightened sugar-content of his blood enabled him to reach the row of artificial cypress
trees that paralleled the rear line of columns.
Gasping, he collapsed in the lee of a gnarled trunk and massaged his numb legs. When his breath
returned, he peered round the trunk тАФ and saw the rift.
It was the result of a circuit defect in the force-field, and apparently neither Alexander the Great nor
the other three roguards had noticed it as yet. It wasn't a large rift, but it was large enough to see through.
The trouble was, it was way up on the force-field wallтАФjust beneath the entablature. However a tall
cypress stood not far away. From its topmost branches an enterprising man might obtain glimpse of the
building's interiorтАФ
if he wanted to badly enough.
Matthew North did.
He was at the base of the tree in a matter of seconds. Minutes later he was riding the wind on lofty
bough, chest tight from the climb, hands numb and bleeding. The rift had a pinkish cast now. The room
beyond it was pink.
The room was a bath.
He had believed in his naive that because the House had been patterned after the Parthenon, it must
of necessity have but one floor. He saw now that such was not the case. For all the loftiness its ceiling,
the bath into which I was gazing was unmistakably a part of a second story.
Apparently the rift in the force field wall was on the visual circuit only, for the three women in room
seemed unaware of the cold wind.
Two of them would have been unaware of it in any event, for the were not truly women. They were
android handmaidens. One of them had been created in the image of Helen of Troy, the other in the
image of Hecuba. So perfectly wrought were they, however, that he would not have guessed the truth
had it not been for the names embroidered beneath the neck lines of their Grecian Tunics.
The woman in the bath proper was real, though. She put to shame the flaming torch of Helen of Troy,
and all but extinguished the flickering one of Hecuba. A monogram on one of the huge white towels the
handmaidens were holding revealed her identity: Dione Christopoulos.
Matthew could not breathe.
Dark of hair and eyes, scarlet of sultry, almost sullen lips, soft-white of water-rivuleting skin, she
stood up in the marble basin. He saw the full breasts, scarlet-nippled to match her lips, the gracefully
flowing buttocks, the breathless slopes of gleaming thighs. As though cognizant of his presence and eager
to flaunt the pastures in which he could not feed, she faced the rift for one full minute before surrendering
herself to her handmaidens. He saw the birthmark then: the purple dagger-shaft between her breasts, its
blade seemingly buried in her white fleshтАФ
At the same time, his eyes caught a movement at the base of the tree.
Lowering them, he saw the roguard standing there. Saturn's ice-blue light glittered on the
Macedonian armor, on the long, lethal lance whose inbuilt laser tube was capable of leveling a mountain.
Matthew shrank against the bough, trying to efface himself from view.
He needn't have. Antigonus or Seleucus or PtolemyтАФwhichever of Alexander the Great's generals
the roguard was тАФ had eyes only for the rift and was utterly unaware of the Peeping Tom in the tree
above his head. Presently he left the trunk and hurried round the corner of the House, heading for the
entrance where Alexander the Great was stationed, and leaving the coast clear.
Matthew reached the ground in seconds, and began running across the flats. He was spent when he
reached the Hostel trembling, when he climbed into bed. All night long Dione Christopoulos had walked
through his twisted dreams, and he had carried a mental picture of her standing in her bath down through
the years to this very moment.