"Paul J. McAuley & Kim Newman - In Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

issues orders through a loud-hailer from the back of El Batador’s pick-up.

Primero: a dancing wing of two hundred teevees.

Segundo: four floats each bearing the glass-fibre likenesses of the
Tucurombé: La Miranda first, with body-painted acolytes throwing real fruit
to the audience; then Ogun Dé with his bodyguard of Tres Milagros bloods
in black spiked rubber demon suits, then San BuriSan on a videowall of one
hundred televisions donated by a variety of Pacific Rim electronics
companies; last Seu Guantanamera accompanied by strolling mariachi
musicians and girls dressed as lightning bolts.

Tercero: the batteria, made up of dockers from Drowntown and
construction workers from the new Todos Santos arcosanti over by Poco
Venecia - during the marching season, drumming in the lunch-hour ousts
even football - all dressed in mauve and yellow and led by El Batador
himself, as he has led them every year for the past twenty-five years.

Cuarto: the mobile sound-stage borne on the backs of three tank
transporters (some general down in Chihuahua owed La Baiana, but what
he was not prepared to say); complete with sound system lighting rig FX
backing musicians and roadies in mauve and yellow. Here Annunciato and
Ros’a’Jericho will amaze the city.

Quinto: two hundred maidens dancing.

Sexto: two hundred lords of the cabañas a-leaping.

Septimo: a wedge of open-topped bunting-and-flower decorated cars
in which the sambaderos and sambaderas of former days, too old now to
dance all the way to the square of Our Lady of the Angels, ride in honour
and splendour, decked with synthetic feathers and often wearing ludicrously
decorated glasses.

Octavo: a rearguard of assorted devos freakos pervos rubberboys
leatherboys bike-fetishists SM enthusiasts etc. etc.

El Batador is already sounding time on his plastic bucket tucked
under his arm, crazy old black man. Annunciato is scared three kinds of
excretaless, only Ros’a’Jericho looks like she knows what she is doing. Her
silver lamé suit is covered in clip-on microphones wired into a transmitter in
the small of her back and beaming tight and righteous into her sampledeck.
No recordings, no found sources; this Fat Tuesday her source is her city
and she mixes in real-time the sounds and music of carnival itself, snitched
and snatched and crammed rammed jammed through her mixing desk.

La Baiana takes his position in the gilded cupola at the back of the
portable sound-stage, looks to make sure every-thing is ready. Which of
course it isn’t but if you waited until it was you would never get anywhere.