"Lumley, Brian - E-Branch 2 - Invaders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

Second Thoughts, and Others Less Mundane 249
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Korath's Story
Malinari
Dark Lords of Starside
A Dark Lady . . . and a Darker Lord
Survivors
Nathan's War
Synchronicity
Synchronicity Again
Dilemmas, Dreams, and Deadspeak
Mindsmog!
Part Four: The Hell of It
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28 Here Be Vampires
29 A Dream and a Word-Game
30 The Lull...
31 ...Before the Storm
32 The Storming
33 Trapped!
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Epilogue

Prologue
In Xanadu, Jethro Manchester had built a pleasure dome, in fact the Pleasure Dome Casino. But that was some time ago, and since then Manchester's fortunes had changed. Now both the casino and the mountain resort of Xanadu belonged to another, to Aristotle Milan, and the new resident-owner's needs required that he make certain alterations.
The casino was a great dome of glass and chrome. It was a three-storey affair \a151 or four-storey, if one included a smaller dome, which sat like a bubble or a raised blister on top of the main structure \a151 that lorded its location at Xanadu's hub, on a false plateau in a high, dog-leg fold of the Australian Macpherson Range of mountains.
Now it was night, but still the work on Mr Milan's alterations continued. He wanted the work completed to his specifications before he reopened Xanadu to the public in just a few days' time. And in his private accommodation in the high bubble dome, Milan himself supervised the last of the work; or if not supervised, at least he was there to see it finished to his satisfaction. But Milan's presence \a151 or more specifically the annoyance that accompanied it \a151 wasn't to Derek Hinch's liking.
Hinch was a painter and decorator, but at times like this he tended to think of himself more as a steeplejack. Inside the bubble it wasn't so bad...there wasn't very far to fall if he made the

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classic mistake of stepping back a few paces to admire his work! But outside, some fifty or sixty feet off the ground: that had been nerve-racking, and thank God he was done with it now.
But black? Painting perfectly good windows black, both inside and out? It didn't make a lot of sense to Derek Hinch. And as for Mr Milan: he didn't make much sense either! The guy must be some kind of eccentric, a nut case, albeit a very rich, powerful one. The way he prowled through the glitzy false opulence of this place, apparently lost in some indefinable distance, in space and time; though mainly (Hinch suspected) lost in a world of his own, the extravagance of his thoughts.
And his music...his bloody terrible, interminable music! There was a gleaming antique jukebox at one end of a small, gently curving, mahogany-topped bar on the perimeter of the bubble, and when Milan was taking it easy he would sit there in an armchair with a drink, just listening to the music...the same damn tunes or songs, or just, well, music, over and over again. And it was driving Hinch nuts, too!
Not that Hinch didn't care for the stuff; he liked \a151 or he used to like, and he would have continued to like \a151 all of this stuff just fine...if he hadn't been obliged to listen to each piece at least thirty or forty times in the space of just seven nights. So thank God he was almost finished here!
But nights! Why in hell couldn't this work be done in daylight hours? And why in hell couldn't Milan sleep nights \a151 like any other mad millionaire? And why in double-damned Ml did he have to play his bloody music like this!?