"Rhys Hughes - The Singularity Spectres" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Rhys)

growing too big and the French government plan to remodel the whole of Heaven on Paris. I don't believe it's
right, meddling with the divine scheme. But Monsieur Nutt holds all the aces, dash his croissants!"

I swallowed thickly. "Perhaps we should start from the beginning? I want you to presume I know nothing.
Just tell me the point of the sphere and its relevance to my ghost."

Replacing his hat and stroking his whiskers, he regarded me with an inscrutable expression before
crying, "Very well, laddie! There's nowt I can do here anyway. Might as well pass the time with talk. First of
all, allow me to declare myself a genius. I'm such a marvellous engineer that I can repair my nervous system
with a spanner. Regular maintenance of my body has ensured a lifespan far exceeding the average.
Unfortunately, my method has been appropriated by my rival and he also enjoys the benefits of a
post-geriatric existence."

I urged him to proceed and he rolled his smudged eyes. "Engineering was not my only concern. I was
also something of a philanthropist. 'Twas my ambition to employ the former in aid of the latter. Prison reform
was my speciality. I believed in rehabilitation rather than punishment and I took my arguments to Mr
Gladstone. My plans for reform went further than our Earthly criminals. I persuaded the Prime Minister that
even souls in Hell were not beyond help. Although he deplored the costs, he eventually gave my project his
blessings."

"And you hollowed out this cavern?" I prompted.

"Certainly, with Irish labour. Then we added the water and two huge furnaces filled with coal which
became the sun and moon. The flowers and dinosaurs are a mystery: I believe they spontaneously generated
from the alluvial mud. The environment suits them. The entire cavern was supposed to be a sort of Eden
where cursed souls might be re-educated in pleasant surroundings. Once we had snatched them from Hell,
we were going to give them another chance to prove themselves capable of living in society. It was an idea
almost Samaritan in its generosity. The reformation of every sinner who had lived on Earth!"

"How did you draw the souls out from Hell?"

"Ah!" He lifted a finger to wipe a tear. "That was my undoing. When I was studying Engineering, the
works of Laplace were mandatory reading. He was the first to suggest that a star which contains enough
mass might collapse upon itself into a singularity -- a body of matter so dense even light cannot escape its
gravitational field. Such an object is now known as a Black Hole. It occurred to me that the same might hold
true for the finer matter which comprises ghosts. If enough ectoplasm was gathered in one place, it would
form a ball which would suck in other phantoms. When this sphere grew to a certain radius, it would be
powerful enough to tug in souls as far away as Hades."

"But surely it would also affect innocent spirits on the surface of the planet? Ordinary ghosts would be
sucked in and crushed into the ball together with the evil spooks!"

"Of course! That was part of the scheme. We hoped that having souls from above mixing with the damned
at such close-quarters would influence the behaviour of the latter. I believed the good qualities of the former
would rub off on the villains. Only later did I realise that spirit-orbs are universities of crime! I'm an optimist,
laddie, and there's not much help for that. But to return to my story: after the cavern was finished, it became
necessary to collect as many spirits as possible at the centre to create the intended gravitational field. To do
this, I originated the licensing scheme for phantoms."

After a pause for breath, he went on, "Since time immemorial, souls who aren't consigned to Heaven or