"Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vonnegut Kurt)

gloves, white socks, and white shoes.
 She was the cleanest, most frozen little girl that Malachi Constant had ever seen. There was a
strange expression on her face, and Constant decided that she was worried about getting the least
bit dirty.
"Nice picture," said Constant.
"Wouldn't it be too bad if she fell into a mud puddle?" said Rumfoord.
Constant smiled uncertainly.
"My wife as a child," said Rumfoord abruptly, and he led the way out of the room.
He led the way down a back corridot and into a tiny room hardly larger than a big broom
closet: It was ten feet long, six feet wide, and had a ceiling, like the rest of the rooms in the
mansion, twenty feet high. The room was like a chimney. There were two wing chairs in it.
"An architectural accident — " said Rumfoord, closing the door and looking up at the ceiling.
"Pardon me?" said Constant.
"This room," said Rumfoord. With a limp right hand, he made the magical sign for spiral
staircase. "It was one of the few things in life I ever really wanted with all my heart when I was a
boy — this little room."
He nodded at shelves that ran six feet up the window wall. The shelves were beautifully made.
Over the shelves was a driftwood plank that had written on it in blue paint: SKIP'S MUSEUM.
Skip's Museum was a museum of mortal remains — of endoskeletons and exoskeletons — of
shells, coral, bone, cartilage, and chiton — of dottles and orts and residua of souls long gone.
Most of the specimens were those that a child — presumably Skip — could find easily on the
beaches and in the woods of Newport. Some were obviously expensive presents to a child
extraordinarily interested in the science of biology.
Chief among these presents was the complete skeleton of an adult human male.
There was also the empty suit of armor of an armadillo, a stuffed dodo, and the long spiral
tusk of a narwhal, playfully labeled by Skip, Unicorn Horn.
"Who is Skip?" said Constant.
"I am Skip," said Rumfoord. "Was."
"I didn't know," said Constant.
"Just in the family, of course," said Rumfoord.
"Um," said Constant.
Rumfoord sat down in one of the wing chairs, motioned Constant to the other.
"Angels can't either, you know," said Rumfoord.
"Can't what?" said Constant.
"Reproduce," said Rumfoord. He offered Constant a cigarette, took one himself, and placed it
in a long, bone cigarette holder. "I'm sorry my wife was too indisposed to come downstairs — to
meet you," he said. "It isn't you she's avoiding — it's me."
"You?" said Constant.
"That's correct," said Rumfoord. "She hasn't seen me since my first materialization." He
chuckled ruefully. "Once was enough."
"I — I'm sorry," said Constant. "I don't understand."
"She didn't like my fortunetelling," said Rumfoord. "She found it very upsetting, what little I
told her about her future. She doesn't care to hear more." He sat back in his wing chair, inhaled
deeply. "I tell you, Mr. Constant," he said genially, "it's a thankless job, telling people it's a hard,
hard Universe they're in."
"She said you'd told her to invite me," said Constant
 "She got the message from the butler," said Rumfoord. "I dared her to invite you, or she
wouldn't have done it. You might keep that in mind: the only way to get her to do anything is to
tell her she hasn't got the courage to do it. Of course, it isn't an infallible technique. I could send
her a message now, telling her that she doesn't have the courage to face the future, and she would