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Isle Of The Dead :: Zelazny Roger
Страница: 107 из 110Also, even if it were a dueling situation, I did not feel that I had anything to fear, considering his condition.
But as we walked along, I considered that I was probably hastening his death by several hours, under guise of a pleasant, near-mystical ritual.
Telepathic euthanasia.
Mental murder.
I was glad to be able to help a fellow creature shuffle off in such a decent way, on the condition that he wanted it. It made me think of my own passing, which I am certain will not be a pleasant one.
I have heard people say that no matter how much you love living, now, this minute, and think that you would like to live forever, someday you will _want_ to die, someday you will pray for death. They had pain in mind when they spoke. They meant they would like to go pretty, like this, to escape.
I do not expect to go pretty, gentle or resigned into this good night myself, thank you. Like the man says, I intend to rage against the dying of the light, fighting and howling every damn step of the way. The disease that was responsible for my making it this far involved quite a bit of pain, you might even say agony, and for a long while, before they froze me. I thought about it a lot then, and I decided I would never opt for the easy way out. I wanted to live, pain and all. There's a book and a man I respect: Andr_ Gide and his _Fruits of the Earth_. On his deathbed he knew he had only a few days left and he wrote like blue blazes. He finished it in about three days and died. In it, he recounts every beautiful thing about the permutations of earth, air, fire and water that surrounded him, things that he loved, and you could tell that he was saying goodbye and did not want to go, despite everything. That is how I feel about it. So, in spite of my involvement, I could not sympathize with Green's choice. I would rather have lain there, broken-boned and all, feeling the rain come down upon me and wondering at it, regretting, resenting a bit and wanting a lot. Maybe it was this, this hunger, that allowed me to learn worldscaping in the first place--so that I could do it all myself, so that I could make more of it. Hell.
We mounted a hill and paused on its summit. Even before we reached it, I knew what would be there when we looked down the far slope.
... Beginning between two massive prows of gray stone, with a greensward that started out as bright as that beneath our feet and grew darker and darker as I swept my eyes ahead, there was the place. It was the big, dark valley. And suddenly I was staring into a blackness so black that it was nothing, nothing at all.
"Another hundred steps will I go with you," I said.
But as we walked along, I considered that I was probably hastening his death by several hours, under guise of a pleasant, near-mystical ritual.
Telepathic euthanasia.
Mental murder.
I was glad to be able to help a fellow creature shuffle off in such a decent way, on the condition that he wanted it. It made me think of my own passing, which I am certain will not be a pleasant one.
I have heard people say that no matter how much you love living, now, this minute, and think that you would like to live forever, someday you will _want_ to die, someday you will pray for death. They had pain in mind when they spoke. They meant they would like to go pretty, like this, to escape.
I do not expect to go pretty, gentle or resigned into this good night myself, thank you. Like the man says, I intend to rage against the dying of the light, fighting and howling every damn step of the way. The disease that was responsible for my making it this far involved quite a bit of pain, you might even say agony, and for a long while, before they froze me. I thought about it a lot then, and I decided I would never opt for the easy way out. I wanted to live, pain and all. There's a book and a man I respect: Andr_ Gide and his _Fruits of the Earth_. On his deathbed he knew he had only a few days left and he wrote like blue blazes. He finished it in about three days and died. In it, he recounts every beautiful thing about the permutations of earth, air, fire and water that surrounded him, things that he loved, and you could tell that he was saying goodbye and did not want to go, despite everything. That is how I feel about it. So, in spite of my involvement, I could not sympathize with Green's choice. I would rather have lain there, broken-boned and all, feeling the rain come down upon me and wondering at it, regretting, resenting a bit and wanting a lot. Maybe it was this, this hunger, that allowed me to learn worldscaping in the first place--so that I could do it all myself, so that I could make more of it. Hell.
We mounted a hill and paused on its summit. Even before we reached it, I knew what would be there when we looked down the far slope.
... Beginning between two massive prows of gray stone, with a greensward that started out as bright as that beneath our feet and grew darker and darker as I swept my eyes ahead, there was the place. It was the big, dark valley. And suddenly I was staring into a blackness so black that it was nothing, nothing at all.
"Another hundred steps will I go with you," I said.