"Norman Spinrad - Riding the Torch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spinrad Norman)

considered the best psychetect on the Trek for nothing.
But D'mahl himself had decorated the salon, with the inevitable
assistance of Jiz Rumoku. On the translucent emerald floor he had planted
a tinkling forest of ruby, sapphire, diamond, and amethyst
trees—cunningly detailed sims of the ancient life-forms that waved
flashing crystal leaves with every subtle current of air. He had topped off
the effect with the scented fog that picked up blue, red, and lavender tints
from the internally incandescent trees, and customarily kept the gravity at
.8 gs to sync with the faerie mood. To soften the crystal edges, Jiz had
gotten him a collection of forty fuzzballs: downy globs in subdued green,
brown, mustard, and gray that floated about randomly at floor level until
someone sat in them. If Korakin had captured D'mahl's clear-eyed core,
Jofe had expressed the neobaroque style of his recent sensos, and to
D'mahl, the combined work of art sang of the paradox that was the Trek.
To his guests, it sang of the paradox that was Jofe D'mahl. Egowise,
D'mahl himself did not deign to make this distinction.
The guest list was also a work of art in D'mahl's neobaroque style: a
constellation of people designed to rub purringly here, jangle like broken
glass there, generate cross-fertilization someplace else, keep the old
karmic kettle boiling. Jans Ryn was displaying herself as usual to a mixed
bag that included Excelsior's chief torchtender, two dirtdiggers from
Kantuck, and Tanya Daivis, the velvet asp. A heated discussion between
Dalta Reed and Trombleau, the astrophysicist from Glade, was drawing
another conspicuous crowd. Less conspicuous guests were floating about
doing less conspicuous things. The party needed a catalyst to really start
torching up lights.
And at 24.00 that catalyst would zap itself right into their sweet little
taps—the premiere tapping of Jofe D'mahl's new senso, Wandering
Dutchmen. D'mahl had carved something prime out of the void, and he
knew it.
"—by backbreeding beyond the point of original radiation, and then up
the line to the elm—"
"—like a thousand suns, as they said at Alamagordo, Jans, and it's only
a bulkhead and a fluxfield away—"
"—how Promethean you must feel—"
"Jof, this nova claims he's isolated a spectral pattern synced to organic
life," Dalta called out, momentarily drawing D'mahl into her orbit.
"In a starscan tape?" D'mahl asked dubiously.
"In theory," Trombleau admitted.
"Where've I heard that one before?" D'mahl said, popping another of
the Wolder flashers. It wriggled through his teeth, then exploded in a
burst of bittersweet that almost immediately faded into a lingering smoky
aftertaste. Not bad, D'mahl thought, dancing away from Trombleau's open
mouth before he could get sucked into the argument.
D'mahl flitted through the mists, goosed Ami Simkov, slapped Darius
Warner on the behind, came upon a group of guests surrounding John
Benina, who had viewpointed the Dutchman. They were trying to pump
him about the senso, but John knew that if he blatted before the premiere,
his chances of working with Jofe D'mahl again were exactly zip.
"Come on, Jofe, tell us something about Wandering Dutchmen," begged