"Adams, Douglas - Starship Titanic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Douglas)

He looked up. There was the Assembly Dock, looming up into the night sky far, far above him. It stretched a good mile up, and the Starship - his Starship - his baby - rose up another half mile above that - ready for blast-off at midday tomorrow - precisely.
The silk coverings flapped in the breeze that swept across the Observation Arena, over the Administration buildings and around the Dock Structures. Leovinus felt a surge of emotion sweep through his body and engulf his magnificent brain, His heart missed several beats. His knees turned to jelly. But it was not his pride in that stupendous structure that gave him butterflies in the tummy. Nor was it the exaltation that, after all these years, it was finally complete that made him feel like a schoolboy on his first date. No, what made his hand shake as he sleeked it through his greying locks was the thought that in there - in those vast halls and state rooms Titania was waiting for him.
As Leovinus leaned towards the Starship, the wind picked up, blasting dead leaves, old snack-wrappings, torn religious journals, pages of sentimental verse, knitting patterns and all the other usual detritus left behind by construction workers, across the Servicing Area. The sheeting that covered the Starship flapped frantically, like the Great Ghoul in the ancient filmed entertainment The Great Ghoul Frightens A Lot Of Folk. Leovinus shuddered with a childhood memory of fear. Then he shuddered again as he suddenly saw a figure slip from the base of the launching gantry into the shadows opposite the main steps of the Starship.
The moment he saw that figure, he knew, deep in his bones, with that certainty that comes of being absolutely without any doubt whatsoever, that everything was about to go terribly, fearfully wrong.
Cautiously he edged round into the shadows where he had seen the figure disappear.
'So?' a voice spoke to him out of the darkness. It was a voice that made his stomach relocate itself around his knees - a voice that made him want to be sick - to be anywhere but where he was. Leovinus looked around for a means of escape, but it was too late. 'Last minute check-ups, eh?' The figure stepped out of the shadow and confronted him. It was that dreadful Journalist from the press conference.
'Haven't you tormented me enough? Haven't you already ruined a day that was meant to be one of the greatest days of my life?' That's what Leovinus wanted to say, but he merely mumbled: 'Oh. It's you.'
'Are you afraid something's going to go wrong with the launch?'
'Of course not!' Leovinus adopted just the right cold tone that gave nothing away. 'I've merely come to pay my regards.' He liked to be thought of as a bit of a sentimentalist as well as a great brain.
'But come on! You must be a bit worried. Everyone knows that the workmanship here on Blerontin has not been a patch on the Yassaccans - in fact, you know and I know, Blerontin craftsmanship is nowhere near good enough to finish a ship of this sophistication.'
'Just because the Blerontin Government chooses to employ the Amalgamated Unmarried Teenage Mothers' Construction Units there is no reason to think that the work is in any way slipshod,' retorted old Leovinus. 'I have every confidence in their work.'
'I don't believe you,' replied The Journalist.
'Very well! I'll show you!' The Great Man saw his private tкte-a-tкte with Titania being blown away on the wind that now buffeted them, as a small unlit work platform carried them up one of the service gantries that surrounded the great Starship.
It was only when you started getting this high up, thought The Journalist, that you really began to appreciate the full scale of the enterprise. The launch area below receded into darkness and silence, as they rattled their way up the side of the vast Starship - higher and higher - until the great keel broadened out and they reached the main body of the ship. A short walk across another gantry and they were at the main doors of the spacecraft. An entry-coder received Leovinus's fingerprint and cross-checked it with a blood sample, recent hair-loss estimate, and favourite recreational activity. The doors slid open and the two entered.
The Journalist had, of course, often been in Starships, but he had never been in a Starship like this. It was magnificent, astonishing. It was built with luxury star-travel in mind. It was built to last. It was built to impress. What's more, it was still being built! Two workmen were slipping into the service elevator, as Leovinus and The Journalist entered the Embarkation Lobby.
'Just some last-minute adjustments,' one of them mumbled to Leovinus and they were gone.
'Hm,' said Leovinus in a way that The Journalist freely translated as: 'I wonder what those two could have been up to? They surely can't still be making adjustments this near to launch? And why didn't I know about them? I'd better check everything.' It was, you understand, a very free translation.
'Donkey-Data-Bases!' exclaimed the Greatest Living Genius in the Galaxy. 'Look at that!'
The Journalist looked. He saw a smartly dressed robot wearing headphones, and standing on the polished marble floor of one of the most elegant rooms he had ever stood in. The design was typical Late Leovinus and yet it was imbued with a spirit that was new. It had a lightness that some critics had thought lacking in much of his earlier work, and the colours were vibrant and yet warm and welcoming. Perhaps Leovinus had at last got in touch with the feminine side of his nature - or perhaps the gentler, more approachable feel of the Starship's interior owed something to the many little finishing touches introduced by Titania.
The Journalist was at a loss to see why the great man was so angry, but Leovinus was already striding across to the far wall. There he yanked at a decorative panel. 'Upside down!' he yelled. 'I sometimes think I have to build the entire ship with my own hands!' And he produced a screwdriver and proceeded to replace the panel in the correct position. 'Can't they see the entire ambient structure of the room is destroyed by exactly that sort of inattention to detail?'
The Journalist made a note in his thumb-recorder.
'Welcome to the Starship Titanic.' The smart robot was now addressing a light-fitting that protruded from the wall. 'Allow me to show you the facilities available to Second Class Travellers.' The thing then turned smartly on its heels and walked straight into the nearest closed door. There was a clang and the robot fell backwards onto the highly decorative marble floor. 'Here you may see the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class!' it announced proudly and extended a whitegloved hand at the ceiling.
The Journalist made another note in his thumb-recorder.
Leovinus's reaction to the robot's minor mishap was also noted down in The Journalist's thumb-recorder. It started off as 'blank disbelief' and ended up as 'cold fury'. In between it went through a fascinating range of adjustments all of which were noted down by The Journalist: 'surprised dissatisfaction' was rapidly replaced by 'stupefied indignation' which in turn quickly became 'bitter resentment' which equally quickly was transformed into 'burning thirst for vengeance' and so to 'cold fury'.
'Brobostigon!' murmured the Great Man, 'That bastard has been skimping on the syntho-neurones!'
The Journalist made another note, but Leovinus turned on him so suddenly that he stuck his thumb in his mouth and pretended to be sucking at it.
'This can't happen on this ship,' explained Leovinus, as he picked up the fallen robot. 'Every Doorbot has a fail-safe neuron embedded in its circuitry that cancels out any non-rational activity such as we just witnessed. They are expensive items, but, I think you will agree, well worth the money.'
The Journalist nodded and pretended that he had a splinter in the end of his thumb.
'Except that that BASTARD BROBOSTIGON HAS OBVIOUSLY LEFT THEM OUT! When I see him I'll...' But Leovinus stopped in mid sentence.
'He's probably wondering what else is wrong with the ship,' thought The Journalist with mounting excitement he could feel a story materializing in front of him - a big story - a humungous story, and the great thing was he wouldn't have to do anything - it was all going to unfold in front of him. He knew it. And, sure enough, before The Journalist could pretend to find the non-existent splinter, Leovinus had given the Doorbot a quick adjustment, the door had opened and the Great Man had been bowed through into the corridor beyond.
'Enjoy your honeymoon, you lucky couple!' called the Doorbot cheerfully. The Journalist noted this down, and hurried after the great architect and ship-builder, who had just turned right into one of the most astounding architectural spaces The Journalist had ever entered.
It was an oval space, marked out by columns. Around the perimeter wall was painted a frieze depicting the favourite recreational pastime of the Founding Fathers of Blerontin: posing for frieze-painters. Leovinus was standing staring up at a huge statue of a winged female that stood at the other end. But The Journalist's eye went down... down and down into what seemed like an infinity of descent, for there at his feet was the great Central Well that occupied the gigantic keel of the Starship. It was the spine of the ship, and around it, like nerve impulses, illuminated elevators constantly went up and down servicing the living quarters that were stacked below them - tier after tier. At the very bottom, far far down below near the bilges of the ship, the Super Galactic Traveller De Luxe Suites; above them, the Second Class Executive Duplexes; and above them, far above them, the fabulously appointed First Class State Rooms.
But The Journalist scarcely had time to take all this in, for Leovinus was off - striding through the many-columned hall towards the far vestibule - through which he disappeared.
By the time The Journalist had caught up with him, Leovinus was standing on the jetty of an even more extraordinary and beautiful feature of the Starship Titanic: the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class.
From the Central Well of the Starship ran two great canals - one to the fore and one to the aft. These partly had the effect of cooling the engines, but were also elegant recreational facilities. Up and down the canal, gondolas plied their way, the automated gondoliers each singing their own personal selection of Blerontinian folk-songs - but particularly the one about the beautiful young female acrobat who fell in love with a gondolier and gave him six pnedes (approximately one million pounds sterling) as a tip.
Leovinus was doing his from-blank-disbelief-to-cold-fury routine again. The Journalist took note.
'They are not supposed to sing unless they've got passengers!' Leovinus seemed to be choking as he clambered down into the nearest waiting gondola. The singing immediately stopped.
The Journalist joined him and said: 'Perhaps they're doing a test? Reversing everything?' It was the only thing he could think of that was in any way cheery.
'Don't talk pigeon poop!' snapped Leovinus. He was clearly in no mood to be cheered. 'Promenade Deck Elevator!'
'Si! House-proud and Religious Mother of Twins!' said the automated gondolier. Leovinus flinched, and felt the vein twitching in his thigh.

Leovinus allowed the irritation to mount within himself, as he straightened one of the priceless NO-Art Masterpieces that decorated the elevator lobby.
'Good day to you, sir, madam or thing. And how may we assist you in your vertical transportation requirements today?' The Liftbot was half-embedded in the wall of the lift - its free hand rested on the lever that came out of its chest.
'Just to the Promenade Deck and no back-chat!' snapped Leovinus. He sometimes regretted the characters that these robots seemed to acquire, but there it was: if the ship's intelligence were to be allowed emotions - and certainly no one could doubt that Titania had strong emotions - then you had to allow her to choose robot-characters she got on with. It was no good forcing the issue. Although Leovinus had, on occasion, spoken to Titania quite forcibly about some of the characters with whom she surrounded herself. But then Titania was so tolerant, so understanding of people's failings and mistakes that she could get on with practically anybody. He had made her like that.
The giant Promenade Deck was Leovinus's particular little favourite. Under its vast transparent canopy, passengers could stroll and marvel at the mind-erupting brilliance of the Galaxy through which they were passing. The vari-spex composition glass, of which the canopy was made, had the effect of intensifying the radiant brightness of the stars, while at the same time making it possible for the observer, by a mere twist of the head, to see - in the detail of a powerful telescope - any particular star that caught his, her or its fancy. Around the perimeter, the pellerator (a sort of horizontal lift of Leovinus's design) enabled the less active travellers to tour the Deck without stirring an unnecessary muscle.
That was the theory. That was what Leovinus had viewed, with great complacence, on his telepresence and in his Virtual Reality Viewer at home. But that was not what he now saw in front of him. Real Reality was different.
What he now saw was what is referred to architecturally as a 'shambles'. The vast glass canopy stretched above, as it should, displaying the immense stretches of pink silk sheeting which covered the ship. But below all was confusion. The beautiful polished parquet floor was approximately one tenth beautiful polished parquet floor - the rest was exposed girders and cable-work, gaping holes, protruding wires and polystyrene cups. Where the large, sprawling brasserie for Second Class Passengers should have sprawled, there was only a large, sprawling empty space littered with builders' rubble and more polystyrene cups. How could this be? They didn't even use polystyrene cups on Blerontin! And yet there they were! There was no disguising the ghastly, unthinkable fact that the Promenade Deck was not finished - nor likely to be before the launch tomorrow morning.
The Journalist turned to see that Leovinus had fallen to his knees. He suddenly looked like the old man that he was. The swagger and gallantry that usually marked his public appearances seemed to have been sucked out of him - leaving him like a crumpled empty bag.
'It can't be true...' he was mumbling into his beard. 'Even Brobostigon... even Scraliontis couldn't lie so... I mean... Only this morning they told me it was all...'
'Good morning, sir, would you like to cut your nasal hair?' A Doorbot had suddenly activated itself and was apparently trying to usher them into a cement mixer.