"Walter Jon Williams - Aristoi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

special habitats of oneirochronic Aristoi, some of whose bodies were long in the grave. In these
palaces the inhabitants danced and discussed and feasted and loved—there had long been competition
among them to design the most dazzling sensual experiences for one another, delightful unrealities
more striking, more "real," than anything experienced in the flesh.

To Persepolis, the dream, came Gabriel. Demons buzzed insistently in his head, but he kept them on
a tight rein.

For Persepolis was a place where demons, as well as dreams, were shared.

A few days before his arrival in Persepolis, in a shimmering predawn on Illyricum, Gabriel glided
through his gardens like a ghost. Perfume rose at his footsteps, lingered in the still air.
Sometimes he wanted simply to be himself: his daimones were asleep or busy with their own
projects, and all was peaceful, as perfect as the plans of this garden he had once built in the
oneirochronon before consummating it in the Realized World.

Rectangles cut the solemn sky as solar panels in the Resi-

dence, the Red Lacquer Gallery, and the Autumn Pavilion slid from concealment and deployed to
catch the first rays of dawn on their surfaces, layers of matte-black photoreactive polymer woven
with pure gold. The rising sun turned the gold grids to scarlet flame.

An English bullterrier, Manfred, trotted silently at Gabriel's heels, absorbing in its own fashion
the dawn, the garden, the perfume. The terrier had implanted as a nurse and in another few moments
would be assisting Gabriel with some minor surgery.

Gabriel climbed the cloudy opal steps of the Autumn Pavilion and stepped into the interior. He
seated himself, facing the entrance, on a bench of a black soft-crystal ceramic that reacted to
his body heat, yielded and conformed to his shape. Manfred curled up at his feet and yawned. An
early bird gave a tentative call.

"Open," Gabriel said.

Silent shutters folded themselves away, inviting the mother-of-pearl dawn. Flower perfume crept
into the still building. The Autumn Pavilion featured rooms designed by each of Gabriel's primary



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daimones, and this room was Horus's contribution: logically eight-sided, the walls covered with
Illyrian Workshop ceramic tiles in aspen-yellow and maple-crimson, each featuring a hand-painted
harvest scene from preindustrial times. Benevolent Demeter gazed down on all this activity from a
ceiling fresco set amid a classic rococo plaster frieze. Tables set beneath the windows were
unassuming wrought-iron. Antique vases held dried flowers to the nonexistent wind.

There was a self-portrait in oils by Horus on one wall, Gabriel's pointed face unusually grave and
balanced beneath the curling mass of copper hair, brows a little knit but on the whole approving
of what he saw. The startling blue of the eyes was a little deemphasized, the wise epicanthal