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Robert A. Heinlein - A Comedy Of Justice
Atec Февраль 27 2008 02:52:13
Книга только для ознакомления
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'Dinner was a gourmet's delight and a social confusion. It was served in the formal dining hall, i.e., that same family room with a different program controlling the hollow grams. The ceiling was higher, the windows were tall, evenly spaced, framed by floor-length drapes, 'and they looked out on formal gardens.
One piece of furniture wheeled itself in, and was not a hollow gram - or not much so. It was a banquet table that (so far as I know) was - in itself, pantry, stove, icebox - all of a well-equipped kitchen. That's a conclusion, subject to refutation. All I can say is that I never saw a servant and never saw our hostess do any work. Nevertheless her husband congratulated her on her cooking - as well he might, and so did we.
Jerry did a little work; he carved a roast (prime rib, enough for a troop of hungry Boy Scouts) and he served the plates, serving them at his place. Once a plate was loaded, it went smoothly around to the person for whom it was intended, like a toy train on a track - but there was no train and no track. Machinery concealed by hollow grams? I suppose so. But that simply covers one mystery with another.
(I learned later that a swank Texas household in that world would have had human servants conspicuously in sight. But Jerry and Katie had simple tastes.)
There were six of us at the table, Jerry at one end, Katie at the other; Margrethe sat on Jerry's right, his daughter Sybil on his left; I was at the right of my hostess, and at her left was Sybil's young man, her date
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