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

As I listened, fear and trembling chewed me up. I'll go further and say that dismay digested me and found
me to its liking. On some level of my psyche I'd anticipated the crisis. I now understood my dream -- my own
phantom had attempted to warn me of the conspiracy, presenting Zimara as a hitch-hiker unable to thumb a
lift, a suitable metaphor for the French system in general, where altruism, though freshly baked each
morning, is stale by the afternoon. Unable to communicate directly with my ears, the ghost which dwelled
within my skeleton had fiddled with my subconscious. Its message was too subtle for me to grasp. To repair
the blunder, I now granted it sole use of my skull.

While it turned the wheels of my cognition with its cirrus fingers, Zimara asked, "If we return to the surface
and lay out sinews across the globe, will souls remain aloft?"

The engineer slapped the wrists of the question. "Aye, I think. But where do we find enough of 'em?"

Unsettled, Zimara gestured at me. "How about the Anatomy Department of the institute? And we'll ask for
volunteers to donate a tendon or two from their ankles." Desperation did not suit his brow, which was glacial
and smug. Raising my hand for silence, I allowed my unkissed lips to dub my spook's more virile opinions.

"I believe I know where the printing-press is located. Furthermore, I can reveal that the villain behind the
scheme and my Dean are the same person. He's been spying on me for years, hiding in the crevices outside
my office. It was he who snipped the string in the grotto with a pair of scissors bought with college funds. Any
nervy mesh strung on the surface will meet with the same fate. If we're going to fix the mess, it must be done
properly. To crack our Nutt, we'll have to discredit him in public, which means a confrontation in his
lecture-theatre. Are we stuck in this pothole or is there a way back?"

"What a question, laddie! Do ye believe I'm a maroon? Travelling up is easy. Now tell me your plan."

"No time. What I require is a selection of phantoms. We'll line the inside of our suitcases with sinews from
your net, fill them to the brim with spectres and carry them to the surface. These will be proof of Dean Nutt's
intentions. They won't constitute hard evidence, but the facts of his immorality will be transparent. Help me
fetch the cases and I'll use an etheric-engyscope to shovel them in. Come now, we only need to fill a couple.
It must be worth a try!"

With a smile which betrayed doubts about my sanity, Zimara preceded me down the path to the shore. From
our makeshift boat, we obtained five or six suitcases which we dragged to the sphere. Kingdom Noisette laid
a web of sinews at the base of each, after untying the knots of his net. I selected my longest instrument and
approached the perimeter of the ball, chattering in the metaphysical chill which emanated from it. I thrust my
tool into the pearly dewdrop, scooping out a portion of compacted ghosts and transferring it into a case.

Quite rapidly, we stuffed them all with congealed ectoplasm. But it was to be regretted there were no women
present, otherwise we would have managed to cram in thrice the amount -- it's a trick men haven't learned.
Anxious not to upset our wispy cargo, we shouldered it back, one case at a time, like mourners at a world's
funeral. Our raft became more buoyant with the addition of these waterproof souls. Wrenching a holiday's
worth of apparitions from the sphere should have reduced the pressure on it to become a singularity, but even
as we mounted the boat, new phantoms from above percolated through the ceiling and added their screaming
molecules to the perpetually rolling mass.

Zimara and the engineer paddled, with spirit-levels and hat, across the antique seas to the mainland. We
transported the cases to the bottom of the escalator and I gazed up the slimy chute. Running an ascent
would be impossible for one in my physical condition, and we had no recidivist cloth to construct a balloon.