"Connie Willis - Spice Pogrom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

SPICE POGROM
Connie Willis

"You've got to talk to him," Chris said. "I've told him there isn't enough
space, but he keeps bringing things home anyway."
"Things?" Stewart said absently. He had his head half-turned as if he
were listening to someone out of the holographic image.
"Things. A six-foot high Buddha, two dozen baseball caps, and a Persian
rug!" Chris shouted at him. "Things I didn't even know they had on Sony.
Today he brought home a piano! How did they even get a piano up here
with the weight restrictions?"
"What?" Stewart said. The person who had been talking to him moved
into the holo-image, focusing as he entered, put a piece of paper in front
of Stewart, and then stood there, obviously waiting for some kind of
response. "Listen, Chris, darling, can I put you on hold? Or would you
rather call me back?"
It had taken her almost an hour to get him in the first place. "I'll hold,"
she said, and watched the screen grimly as it went back to a
two-dimensional wall image on the phone's screen and froze with Stewart
still smiling placatingly at her. Chris sighed and leaned back against the
piano. There was hardly room to stand in the narrow hall, but she knew
that if she wasn't right in view when Stewart came back on the line, he'd
use it as an excuse to hang up. He'd been avoiding her for the last two
days.
Stewart's image jerked into a nonsmiling one and grew to a full
holo-image again. With the piano in here, there wasn't really enough room
for the phone. Stewart's desk blurred and dissolved on the keyboard, but
Chris wanted Stewart to see how crowded the piano made the hall. "Chris,
I really don't have time to worry about a few souvenirs," he said. "We've
got real communications difficulties over here with the aliens. The
Japanese translation team's been negotiating with them for a space
program for over a week, but the Eahrohhs apparently don't understand
what it is we want."
"I'm having communications difficulties over here, too," Chris said. "I
tell Mr. Ohghhi..." She stopped and looked at the alien's name she had
written on her hand so she could pronounce it. "Mr.
Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh that there isn't room in my apartment and that
he's got to stop buying things, and he seems to understand what I'm
saying, but he goes right on buying. I've only got a two-room apartment,
Stewart."
"You could move your couch out of the living room," he said.
"Then where would I sleep? On top of the piano? You said you'd try to
find him someplace else to stay."
"I'm giving the matter top priority, darling, but you don't know how
impossible it is to find any kind of space at all, let alone space with the
kinds of specifications Mr. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh requires." A blond
young woman moved into the image and put a computer printout down in
front of Stewart. Chris braced herself against being put on hold again.
"We were already full over here at NASA, and today Houston sent a dozen
linguistic specialists up on the shuttle, and I don't know where we're going