Odnośniki
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- Anderson Poul StraĹź Czasu Tom 1 StraĹźnicy Czasu
- Carpenter Leonard Conan Tom 31 Conan NajeĹşdĹşca
- Felix, Net i Nika Tom 13 KlÄ twa Domu McKillianĂłw
- Clancy Tom Splinter Cell 02 Operacja Barakuda
- Diwow_Oleg_ _Najlepsza_zaloga_Slonecznego_Tom_1
- Herbert Frank Tom 2 Dune Messiah
- Sandemo_Margit_ _Saga_o_Czarnoksiazniku_Tom_6
- Benzoni Juliette Katarzyna tom 6
- J.Lynn ZostaĹ ze mnÄ tom 2
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tower, whose top Michael still could not make out. The bed was as large as any
he had ever seen. A pale blue jumpsuit lay upon its flowered spread. Lisa
hurled the jumpsuit toward a mirrored closet door.
Michael watched, bemused, as it seemed to pass part way through the glass, as
if it had been on the way to hang itself away when its mistress had stopped
impelling it with her will. When he looked back at
Lisa, she had already peeled the bed's covers back to reveal pink silk sheets.
Now she sat down, lay back, and sank into the mattress. "So much nicer," she
sighed. "Than pine needles. Or even grass."
When the strap of her bra parted with a "snap," he looked away, at carpet,
walls, pool ... The ceiling was mostly covered with a gray rectangle. "What's
that?" he asked. "A TV screen." The tip of her tongue appeared between her
teeth as she grinned. Then she pointed, and it came to life, flickering snow,
jagged lines, images that Michael quickly recognized as Lisa, in bed with ...
He told himself that what he knew from long ago, and what he had learned more
recently, was quite enough to keep him from being surprised by anything she
might do. Not that he hadn't seen as much before in other women's bedrooms, or
taken part himself a time or two. Anton appeared in the bedroom doorway, a
silver tray in his hands. He did not seem to react to his nearly naked
mistress, nor to the image of himself on the ceiling. "The drugs," he said.
Behind him stood Ling-ko, holding a second tray with coffee pot, two china
cups, cream, and sugar. Ignoring them both, Lisa pointed toward two small
hatches beside the overhead screen. They opened, and a pair of metallic
tentacles emerged. Each one carried embedded in its tip a lens. Red "ready"
lights came on, and the image on the screen split to be replaced by two views
of Lisa in real time, lying on the bed, stretching, staring at herself from
two different angles. She patted the sheet beside her hip. "Sit down,
Michael."
Then, to the servants, she said, "Set the trays down, there." As she spoke, a
table appeared beside the bed, and Michael found it in him to wonder why she
bothered with servants. In the virtual world, she could imagine anything she
wanted, the coffee and the drugs, trays and all, as easily as the table.
Indeed, why did Anton and Ling-ko have to go elsewhere in this luxurious house
to find and fetch what she had ordered? If Lisa thought it beneath her dignity
to soil her mind with practicalities as the rich of other ages had refused to
soil their hands with anything that resembled labor, then couldn't the
servants simply have imagined what they needed?
Anton had retreated to stand beside the room's entrance. Ling-ko was coaxing
Lisa's jumpsuit out of the substance of the mirrored closet door, hanging up
the garment, easing shut the door, and finally joining his fellow servant.
Michael wished he could ask them, but there was no answer in their stiff backs
or sullen glares. He shook his head and took
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his seat obediently. When she said, "You can pour. No cream. Just a pinch of
sugar," he obliged and then watched in fascination as she set the cup on air
an inch above her right breast and a thin stream of black coffee arced toward
her mouth. Even as she swallowed a ghostly hand lifted a spoon from the drug
tray and stirred snow-white powder into her cup. He sipped at his own
undoctored coffee in the conventional way until she asked, "What else do we
have for dope?"
He looked at that tray. Once he had been no stranger to social snorting and
puffing, but it had been a long time since he had last indulged. His physician
had taken him off much more than alcohol. He held up a paper cylinder filled
with reddish leaf. "It's the wrong color for marijuana."
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"Cojuana," she said. "They don't even have it in the meat world."
He recognized a squeeze bottle half full of cloudy liquid as eyedrops.
There were pills, crystals, and balls of resin, pipes and needles, vials of
colored powders. There was even a pair of wires attached to a small
crackle-finished box; the last time he had seen such a rig, the wires had been
inserted in the brain of a corpse in a Coleridge office. The company physician
later told him the device stimulated the pleasure center, and some people
would rather starve to death than turn it off.
"You've got everything, haven't you?"
"I try." For just a second, her expression was as coy as that of a little girl
who has been complimented on her doll collection. It changed, grew sharper,
when she glanced toward the servants. "Anton.
Light us up."
Anton obediently came forward, produced a disposable lighter, chose a cojuana
joint, puffed it into life, and passed it to his mistress. He seemed to stay
as far as possible from Michael. Lisa waved Anton away, toked, and passed the
joint to Michael. The drug hit him with a rush of preternatural delight, of
clarity and relaxation. "That's something new," he said. She giggled. "Real [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]