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

a woman wearing a cloud of bright-yellow mist. D'mahl couldn't
remember her with his flesh, but didn't bother tapping for it. Instead, he
bit into a cubical flasher that atomized at the touch of his teeth, whiting
out every synapse in his mouth for a mad micropulse. Feh.
"Two hints," D'mahl said. "John Benina played one of the two major
viewpoints, and it's a mythmash."
A great collective groan went up, under cover of which D'mahl
ricocheted away in the direction of Jiz Rumoku, who was standing in a
green mist with someone he couldn't make out.
Jiz Rumoku was the only person privileged to bring her own guests to
D'mahl's parties, and just about the only person not involved in the
production who had any idea of what Wandering Dutchmen was about. If
Jofe D'mahl could be said to have a souler (a dubious assumption), she
was it.
She was dressed, as usual, in tomorrow's latest fashion: a pants suit of
iridescent, rigid-seeming green-and-purple material, a mosaic of planar
geometric forms that approximated the curves of her body like a medieval
suit of armor. But the facets of her suit articulated subtly with her tiniest
motion—a fantastic insectile effect set off by a tall plumelike crest into
which her long black hair had been static-molded.
But D'mahl's attention was drawn to her companion, for he was
obviously a voidsucker. He wore nothing but blue briefs and thin brown
slippers; there was not a speck of hair on his body, and his bald head was
tinted silver. But persona aside, his eyes alone would have instantly
marked him: windows of blue plex into an infinite universe of utter
blackness confined by some topological legerdemain inside his gleaming
skull.
D'mahl tapped the voidsucker's visual image to the banks. "I.D.," he
subvoced. The name "Haris Bandoora" appeared in his mind. "Data brief,"
D'mahl subvoced.
"Haris Bandoora, fifty standard years, currently commanding
scout-ship Bela-37, returned to Trek 4.987 last Tuesday. Report
unavailable at this realtime."
Jiz had certainly come up with something tasty this time, a void-sucker
so fresh from the great zilch that the Council of Pilots hadn't yet released
his report.
"Welcome back to civilization, such as it is, Commander Bandoora,"
D'mahl said.
Bandoora turned the vacuum of his eyes on D'mahl. "Such as it is," he
said, in a cold clear voice that seemed to sum up, judge, and dismiss all of
human history in four dead syllables.
D'mahl looked away from those black pits, looked into Jiz's almond
eyes, and they cross-tapped each other's sensoriums for a moment in
private greeting. Jofe saw his own mirrored body, felt the warmth it
evoked in her. He kissed his lips with Jiz's, tasting the electric smokiness
of the flashers he had eaten. As their lips parted, they broke their taps
simultaneously.
"What's in that report of yours that the Pilots haven't released to the
banks yet, Bandoora?" D'mahl asked conversationally. (How else could you
make small talk with a voidsucker?)