"John Varley - Mammoth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

and then stand and stare at it, wondering why anybody spent six dollars on crap like that, much less a
million, and feeling like a fool? Pretend he really liked some stupid scrawl by Picasso? He owned
quite an extensive collection of original Norman Rockwells, a single Monet that he found pleasant to
look at, hanging behind his desk, and that was the extent of his fine art collection.

No, Howard Christian's mania was for things a lot more recent. He collected twentieth-century
ephemera, and automobiles and aircraft of any vintage.

His idea of a wonderful day was to drive his silver-gray 1937 Packard V-12 convertible coupe
to a toy collectors' convention and spend ten or twenty thousand dollars on a few rare tin robots from
Japan. Or even better, to toodle along Melrose Avenue in his Hispano-Suiza H6B, made for Andre
Dubonnet by the Nieuport Astra Aviation Company from copper-riveted tulipwood—the only car of
its kind in the world—and turn in under the fabulous white gate of the Warner Brothers Studio, which
he owned, gate and all.

He also owned a major television network, several cable channels, a chain of theme parks, and
Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus.

He stood now in the eagle's right eye and looked out in satisfaction at the entertainment capital
of the world, much of which he owned. As the mighty bird turned, he could pick out all the major
sites. Over there was Culver City, where MGM once reigned as the big dog of the silver screen.
Now its old backlot was full of condominiums. There was CBS Television City. And there, to the
west, was the abomination of Century City, and the corpse of 20th Century Fox Studios, now just a
depressing collection of uninspired skyscrapers.

He loved standing there. It made him feel like Batman.

A bell sounded discreetly.
 "Warburton here, Mr. Christian. I have Professor Wright."

"Good. Bring him right up, please."



MATTHEW Wright was first out of the elevator. "Oh, wow," he said, and strode straight for the
eagle's eye, not seeming to see Howard Christian standing there. He looked out over the city, and
down the steep side of the tower.

Christian was somewhat taken aback. No more than a dozen people had ever been in the
eagle's head, other than the maintenance crew. He brought people up to impress them, of course, and
it was a measure of the reputation Matt Wright had in the small world of cutting-edge physics that
Christian had known immediately that no other place would do for their first meeting. But he had
expected to control it, as he always did, and in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on, he felt he had
lost control already, before he could get two sentences out.

"Oh, boy," Matt said, shaking his head as he stepped back from the window. "I'm doing it again.
I'm afraid I don't have a lot of social graces, Mr. Christian. I'm Matt Wright." He held out his hand.

Christian took it, slowly, and allowed his hand to be pumped. Christian saw a man who might be
in his late twenties, but whose eyes were considerably older. The dossier Warburton had given him