"John Varley - Gaea 3 - Demon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

Close behind them were the arriflexes, accompanied by producers, and
behind them were the lordly panaflexes, each with its attendant
executiveproducer. The production species hung back with nothing to do while
their photofaunal symbiotes gorged on silver nitrate, pyroxylin, and other
chemicals, each going to its proper holding bladder. All the producers looked
much the same, except for their size. The execs were the largest and the only
ones with a voice. From time to time, for reasons having nothing to do with
communication, one of them would grunt unch, unch.
As the bolies, arries, and panas chowed down, others of the Crew
filtered into the site, dodging carpenters, who were putting the finishing
touches on their work with Swiss Army fingernails. There was a gaggle of
twenty-meter booms, stalking through the chaos like solemn storks. Groups of
grips and bestboys quickly broke up, guiding others to their work sites.
Painters sucked stains and dyes from the teamsters, then spread them over the
bare wood with their long perforated tails. Elephants arrived, pulling
rumbling carts full of costumes, props, carpets, make-up, and portable
dressing rooms. These were real Earth elephants, bred from imported stock. In
Gaea's gravity, elephants did not lumber; they pranced, supple and frisky as
cats.
Pandemonium was taking shape.
Humanoids, androids, homunculi, and a few genuine human beings made
their penultimate entrances, signaling it would not be long before the
appearance of the Director Herself.
Some of these human-based and human-derived hybrids were workers, others
mere extras. Some were the shambling undead, from which even the brainless
constructs seemed to recoil. A very few were stars. Luther swept in with fire
in his demented eyes and took his apostles straight to their spare chapel.
Brigham and his boys rode in on horses to find the Temple not yet ready for
them. There were recriminations, and conniption fits. Mary Baker was there,
and so was Elron. It was rumored that Billy Sunday was in the neighborhood,
and perhaps even Kali. It was going to be quite a festival.
As each bolex, arriflex, and panaflex finished eating, the appropriate
producer attached itself and the two moved off as one. Like the producers, the
photofauns were enough alike that one could serve as model for all, except in
size. The most important thing about a panaflex was the size of its single,
glassy eye, and the width of its horizontal anus, which was precisely seventy
millimeters.
A panaflex had only one urge: getting the shot. It would do anything to
get the shot-take a ride on a copter, dangle from a boom, go over a waterfall
in a barrel. Its unblinking eye ogled everything, and when it was ready, it
shot film. Somewhere in its innards guncotton and camphor and other unlikely
substances came together under considerable pressure to form a continuous
strip of celluloid. That strip was coated with photoreactive chemicals to
produce a full-color negative. The strip moved behind the panaflex's eye and
was exposed in discrete frames by a muscle-and-bone pull-down and shutter
mechanism Edison would have recognized.
The producer rode on the back of the panaflex, facing the rear, ready
for the emerging film, which it ate. Naturally, this required a close contact
to prevent fogging by ambient light. It didn't faze the producer, who was
always hungry for film. By eating it, the producer also developed and fixed