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Isle Of The Dead :: Zelazny Roger
Страница: 105 из 110"
--_I have no choice--and please hurry_.
"All right. I'll go through with it, this one last time. --Where are the tapes?"
--_After the rite has begun and may not be stopped, then I will tell you_.
I chuckled.
"Okay. I don't blame you for not trusting me."
--_You were shielding. You must have been planning to trick me_.
"Probably. I'm not really sure."
I unwrapped the _glitten_, broke off the proper proportions.
"Now we will walk together," I began, "and only one of us two will return to this place ..."
* * *
After a cold, gray time and a black, warm one, we walked in a twilit place without wind or stars. There was only bright green grass, high hills and a faint aurora borealis that licked at the grayblueblack sky, following the entire circle of the broken horizon. It was as if the stars had all fallen, been powdered, were strewn upon the hilltops.
We walked effortlessly--almost strolling, though with a purpose--our bodies whole once more. Green was at my left hand, among the hills of the _glitten_-dream--or was it a dream? It seemed true and substantial, while our broken, tired carcasses lying on rocks in the rain now seemed a dream remembered, out of times long gone by. We had always been walking here, so, Green and I--or so it seemed--and a feeling of well-being and amity lay upon us. It was almost the same as the last time I had come to this place. Perhaps I had always really been here.
We sang an old Pei'an song for a time, then Green said, "I give you the _pai'badra_ I held against you, _Dra_. I hold it no more."
"This is good, _Dra_ tharl."
"I promised, too, to tell you something. It was of the tapes, yes. --They lie beneath the empty green body I was privileged to wear for a time."
"I see."
"They are useless. I called them to me there with my mind, from a vault where I had kept them. They had been damaged by the forces let loose upon the isle; and so, also, were the tissue cultures. Thus do I keep my word, but poorly. You gave me no choice, though. I could not come this way alone."
I felt that I should be upset, and knew that for a time I could not be.
"You did what you had to," I felt myself saying. "Do not be troubled. Perhaps it is better that I cannot recall them. So much has gone by since their times. Perhaps they would have felt as I once felt, lost in a strange place. They might not have gone on as I did, to embrace it. I do not know. Let it be as it is. The thing is done."
"Now I must tell you of Ruth Laris," he said.
--_I have no choice--and please hurry_.
"All right. I'll go through with it, this one last time. --Where are the tapes?"
--_After the rite has begun and may not be stopped, then I will tell you_.
I chuckled.
"Okay. I don't blame you for not trusting me."
--_You were shielding. You must have been planning to trick me_.
"Probably. I'm not really sure."
I unwrapped the _glitten_, broke off the proper proportions.
"Now we will walk together," I began, "and only one of us two will return to this place ..."
* * *
After a cold, gray time and a black, warm one, we walked in a twilit place without wind or stars. There was only bright green grass, high hills and a faint aurora borealis that licked at the grayblueblack sky, following the entire circle of the broken horizon. It was as if the stars had all fallen, been powdered, were strewn upon the hilltops.
We walked effortlessly--almost strolling, though with a purpose--our bodies whole once more. Green was at my left hand, among the hills of the _glitten_-dream--or was it a dream? It seemed true and substantial, while our broken, tired carcasses lying on rocks in the rain now seemed a dream remembered, out of times long gone by. We had always been walking here, so, Green and I--or so it seemed--and a feeling of well-being and amity lay upon us. It was almost the same as the last time I had come to this place. Perhaps I had always really been here.
We sang an old Pei'an song for a time, then Green said, "I give you the _pai'badra_ I held against you, _Dra_. I hold it no more."
"This is good, _Dra_ tharl."
"I promised, too, to tell you something. It was of the tapes, yes. --They lie beneath the empty green body I was privileged to wear for a time."
"I see."
"They are useless. I called them to me there with my mind, from a vault where I had kept them. They had been damaged by the forces let loose upon the isle; and so, also, were the tissue cultures. Thus do I keep my word, but poorly. You gave me no choice, though. I could not come this way alone."
I felt that I should be upset, and knew that for a time I could not be.
"You did what you had to," I felt myself saying. "Do not be troubled. Perhaps it is better that I cannot recall them. So much has gone by since their times. Perhaps they would have felt as I once felt, lost in a strange place. They might not have gone on as I did, to embrace it. I do not know. Let it be as it is. The thing is done."
"Now I must tell you of Ruth Laris," he said.