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

A robutler dating from the same "school" as the Alexander the Great roguard and wearing a Grecian
tunic on the front of which the name Pindar was embroidered, came forward on sandaled feet. He took
Matthew's greatcoat and ear-flapped cap, and conducted him across the room to a round marble table
that stood at the base of the staircase. Passing the fountain, Matthew gave a start when he saw the silvery
flashes that spelled the presence of Venerian piranhas.
There were hundreds of them. No, not hundreds. Thousands. Hera's pets? he wondered.

After seating him at the table, Pindar retired to the columnar sidelines. Matthew saw the other
androids then.
There was one standing at the base of each column. All of them wore tunics and sandals similar to
Pindar's, and all of them save one were standing in statue-like immobility. The exception was an old
"man" with a sensitive, bearded face who was regarding Matthew intently.
As Matthew watched, the android left his column and came over to the table. He leaned forward, the
tiny tubes that constituted his eyes alternately dimming and brightening. Matthew remembered
encountering a similar reaction in one of the robartenders at the Haven. The robartender was a product
of the same "school" that had produced the House of Christopoulos "personnel", and in common with all
such "character" androids he could function effectively only as long as the scheme of things which he had
been built to fit into remained at least reasonably in keeping with his "personal" sense of right and wrong.
His sense of right and wrong was clear-cut enough. But therein lay its weakness. He believed that the
three jettractor pilots should drink themselves into insensibility in his bar at least once during their
layovers, and when Matthew had refused to touch a drop during one of his (he had been combating a
peptic ulcer at the time), the robartender had suffered a mechanical breakdown, the first symptom of
which had been an alternate dimming and brightening of his eyes.
Matthew read the name on the old "man's" tunic. "Aeschylus?"
The old "man" nodded eagerly. "Yes. Aeschylus тАФ overseer of baths and bedrooms." And then,
"This morning, darkly plotting deep within, the monarch sleeping softly by her side, she тАФ"
"You dare leave your post after hours!"
It was Hera. Hera in a sarong-like gown that glittered with diamonds. Hera, tall and imperious, eyes
abyss-dark with rage.
Aeschylus stepped back, eye-tubes working furiously. "Bumbling old fool," she went on. "Get back
to your column! You'll be scrapped tomorrow тАФ I never could stand listening to your plays anyway.
They're stupid!"
The old "man" turned and shuffled back across the floor and took up a stone-like stance by the
column he had so recently left. Hera turned to Matthew who had risen to his feet. "I apologize for his
presumption," she said. "Please sit down."
Matthew did so, and she sat down next to him on the bench. There were lines of tiredness at her
eye-corners тАФ or perhaps lines of worry; it was difficult to tell тАФ and her face seemed slightly thinner
than it had been before.
She clapped her hands. A moment later a mech-maid hearing a tray with a tall dark bottle and two
flower-stem glasses on it emerged from a doorway to the right of the staircase. The embroidery on her
tunic-front revealed her name to be Corinna. "Will that be all, madam?" she asked, after setting the
glasses and the bottle before them.
"For the moment. Begone, kitchen wench!"
Corinna departed. Hera filled the glasses and handed one to Matthew.
She raised the other. "A toast to your loyalty, Matthew North," she said. "May it hover forever over
the House of Christopoulos like the great and shining star it truly is."

They touched glasses; drank . . . The wine ignited cool fires within him. Lambent flames rose up and
licked his thoughts.
Was this the wine the House of Christopoulos was famous for? he wondered. The wine that Nick the