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Isle Of The Dead :: Zelazny Roger
Страница: 11 из 110"
"No, I'm justwhat I am."
"That's what I said."
"I don't think so, but it's been good knowing you."
She finished her drink and put it down.
"It's getting chilly out here."
"Yes."
"Let us repair within."
"I'd like to repair."
I put down my cigar and we stood and she kissed me. So I put my arm around her trim and sparkling, blue-kept waist and we moved away from the bar, toward the archway, through the archway and beyond, into the house we were leaving.
Let's make it a triple-asterisk break:
* * *
Perhaps the wealth I acquired along the way to becoming who I am is one of the things that made me one of the things that I am; i.e., a bit of a paranoid. No.
It's too pat.
I could justify the qualms I feel each time I leave Homefree by saying that this is their source. Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn't really paranoia if there really are people out to get you. And there are, which is one of the reasons things are arranged to such an extent that I could stand all alone on Homefree and defy any man or government that wanted me to come and take me. They'd have to kill me, which would be a fairly expensive proposition, as it would entail destroying the entire planet. And even then, I think I've got an out that might work, though I've never had to test it under field conditions.
No, the real reason for my qualms is the very ordinary fear of death and non-being that all men know, intensified many times, though once I had a glimpse of a light that I can't explain ... Forget that. There's me and maybe a few Sequoia trees that came onto the scene in the twentieth century and have managed to make it up until now, the thirty-second. Lacking the passivity of the plant kingdom, I learned after a time that the longer one exists the more strongly one becomes infected with a sense of mortality. Corollary to this, survival--once a thing I thought of primarily in Darwinian terms, as a pastime of the lower classes and phyla--threatens to become a preoccupation.
"No, I'm justwhat I am."
"That's what I said."
"I don't think so, but it's been good knowing you."
She finished her drink and put it down.
"It's getting chilly out here."
"Yes."
"Let us repair within."
"I'd like to repair."
I put down my cigar and we stood and she kissed me. So I put my arm around her trim and sparkling, blue-kept waist and we moved away from the bar, toward the archway, through the archway and beyond, into the house we were leaving.
Let's make it a triple-asterisk break:
* * *
Perhaps the wealth I acquired along the way to becoming who I am is one of the things that made me one of the things that I am; i.e., a bit of a paranoid. No.
It's too pat.
I could justify the qualms I feel each time I leave Homefree by saying that this is their source. Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn't really paranoia if there really are people out to get you. And there are, which is one of the reasons things are arranged to such an extent that I could stand all alone on Homefree and defy any man or government that wanted me to come and take me. They'd have to kill me, which would be a fairly expensive proposition, as it would entail destroying the entire planet. And even then, I think I've got an out that might work, though I've never had to test it under field conditions.
No, the real reason for my qualms is the very ordinary fear of death and non-being that all men know, intensified many times, though once I had a glimpse of a light that I can't explain ... Forget that. There's me and maybe a few Sequoia trees that came onto the scene in the twentieth century and have managed to make it up until now, the thirty-second. Lacking the passivity of the plant kingdom, I learned after a time that the longer one exists the more strongly one becomes infected with a sense of mortality. Corollary to this, survival--once a thing I thought of primarily in Darwinian terms, as a pastime of the lower classes and phyla--threatens to become a preoccupation.