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

Hell have been permitted to float near the site of their demise. They are also allowed to move through walls. I
prevailed upon Mr Gladstone to pass a secret law in Parliament requiring all ghosts to own haunting licenses.
Those who didn't would have to obey the laws of physics and drop through the ground toward the middle of
the planet -- which is logically where they should end up if they are able to travel through matter. Because
phantasmic society so closely follows our own, the laws we pass have an effect on what happens to ghosts.
At once, vast numbers of spooks dropped through the world and ended up here. Soon the sphere was large
enough to tug in our first damned soul: the Marquis de Sade. I was standing here when he was drawn through
the walls of Hell and propelled across the aether. He made quite a splash when he arrived. A short, heavy
man in a peruke.

"I can't believe he preferred this to the fiery pit. It sounds just as horrid as eternal perdition!"

"Obviously the sphere was a temporary measure. When all the sinners had arrived from Hell and been
converted by their nicer-behaved fellows, I was going to license the lot of them. The ball would be dismantled
and the phantoms set free to return to the surface. Like the others, de Sade would have another go at
humanity! Within a year, the orb was so swollen that its gravitational field extended to the darkest corner of
Tartarus, where Judas, Cassius and Brutus are endlessly chomped by the Devil. Once they appeared, Hell
was empty and it was time to start freeing spectres. This was when my collaborator and myself fell out. We
constructed a huge printing-press to churn out licenses. One by one, ghosts peeled from the sphere and
regained anthropoidal form. After a period of recuperation in the cavern, they were escorted back to the
surface to resume haunting in a nobler fashion. Or rather, this is what was supposed to happen! On the first
night of printing, the press was stolen! Monsieur Nutt, acting for his republic, spirited it away!"

"But why did you need his input in the first place?" I ventured. "A superb engineer like yourself must be
able to design a printing-press on his own! Why not build another?"

"Ghosts were once automatically entitled to haunt and exorcists had to revoke this right with bell, book
and candle. These three items, when used in conjunction, could hurl a troublesome phantom down to the
centre of the Earth. To send our spirits back up, we had to reverse the process and split apart this trilogy of
adjuncts. Our printing-press requires no ink or lead-type: it nullifies the ectoplasmic aura which connects bell,
book and candle by bombarding each with garlic. Unfortunately, the items are destroyed in the operation. We
had sufficient books and candles, but too few bells in the Empire to license every phantom. Besides, we had
to take the French government into our confidence at the very beginning: it wasn't enough to ratify the
licensing laws in our parliament. As well as Mr Gladstone, the Gallic leader, Eugène Duclerc, had to pass the
Bill or the spectral courts would have ignored it."

"This presents a problem," I agreed. "Do you have any idea where it might be now? Surely there aren't
too many places to conceal a cyclopean printing-press and a Hell's worth of clappers, novels and tallows?
Where would you hide them if you were Monsieur Nutt?" As I uttered the name, I thought of my Dean and
squealed.

Kingdom Noisette held up his net sadly. "Laddie, if I had any clue, I'd be on top looking for it. I've been
trying to catch spectres as they fall through the ceiling, to stop them merging with the orb. This net is made
of sinews, the only substance which can hold unlicensed ghosts. But it's a losing battle: the ball has been
growing unchecked for a century. First it emptied Hell of sinners, then it sucked the faith from dwellers on the
surface -- which is why there has been an increase in atheism. Now it's ready to collapse and form a
singularity which will pull in blessed souls from Heaven, which is further away than Hell. The French will then
send agents to teach them Parisian ways. When they've been indoctrinated to appreciate haute couture and
glace plombière, the press will be taken out of hiding and set to work, hurling 'em back. The whole universe
will be colonised with onion shrugs!"