S.N.U.F.F. by Victor Pelevin

Author:Victor Pelevin [Pelevin, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2015-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

The room where Grim and Chloe were checked by the doctors was like a wardrobe, with mirrors on the inside. The make-up room where they were prepared for the shoot looked like the Urkagan’s boudoir in the memorable pre-war clip (the only thing missing was the bloodstained rubber woman in the background). But from the confused, glittering welter of the first few hours, all that stuck in Grim’s memory was the shabby, curving corridor that they were led along from one studio to another.

The corridor was lined with black panels of carbon with holes in them. There were wires dangling about untidily on all sides, and white notices on the panels themselves:

3D PROJECTOR MAINTENANCE

SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE

‘This is how everything here really looks,’ Damilola said with an incomprehensible giggle as they walked past the announcements. He was probably joking, but Grim really believed that the new world consisted of corridors like this.

And also of people, proud Byzantines, ‘children of Manitou and wearers of the toga’. Although almost none of them really wore a toga. They dressed in anything at all. Practically like the Orks, only ‘shabbier’, as Chloe whispered.

When the Byzantine cameras weren’t at work, the people were polite and as indifferent as walls. But when the cameras were switched on, the pressure was on Grim.

He knew that his manner in front of the camera was too tense – and that very knowledge made him tenser still. When he was answering questions he hesitated and tried to speak as little as possible. But that was in keeping with the image of an Orkish soldier with a scorched face who’d had a hard life, so all in all everything went off pretty well.

Chloe, on the contrary, blossomed in the bright beams of attention, and even her grief for Bernard-Henri proved extremely photogenic. When she was handed the symbolic key to his home and the audience started applauding, even after all the tears she had already shed, she still managed to eke out just one more touching little tear – exactly the right size to be noticeable on a manitou screen.

Damilola looked tired. He left after promising that the real introduction to the new world would begin in a few days’ time, after the refugees had settled in and had a rest.

After Alena-Libertina had concluded her introductory chat with Chloe, a polite lady from the reception committee took the young Orks to settle into their new home.

The journey from the shooting stage to their home took only five minutes. The ease with which they reached it was simply magical – travelling on the metrolift (or, as people here called it, the ‘tube’), a small, cosy cabin with four seats. It was called just like an ordinary lift by pressing a button in the corridor, and after that it set off along any given route. Grim tried to find out from the female attendant how these capsules, upholstered in velour fabric and smelling of violets, managed not to crash into each other

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