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Isle Of The Dead :: Zelazny Roger
Страница: 2 из 110We spend some time on the beach, maybe side by side, and then that slopping, smelling, chilly thing rakes it with the liquid fingers of a crumbling hand and some of the things are gone again. The mysterious bird-cries are the open end of the human condition. The voices of the gods? Maybe. Finally, to nail all corners of the comparison to the wall before we leave the room, there are two things that caused me to put it there in the first place: sometimes, I suppose, things that are taken away might, by some capricious current, be returned to the beach. I'd never seen it happen before, but maybe I hadn't waited around long enough. Also, you know, somebody could come along and pick up something he'd found there and take it away from the Bay. When I learned that the first of these two things might actually have happened, the first thing I did was puke. I'd been drinking and sniffing the fumes of an exotic plant for about three days. The next thing I did was expel all my house guests. Shock is a wonderful soberer, and I already knew that the second of the two things was possible--the taking away of a thing from the Bay--because it had happened to me, but I'd never figured on the first coming true. So I took a pill guaranteed to make me a whole man in three hours, followed it with a sauna bath and then stretched out on the big bed while the servants, mechanical and otherwise, took care of the cleaning up. Then I began to shake all over. I was scared.
I am a coward.
Now, there are a lot of things that scare me, and they are all of them things over which I have little or no control, like the Big Tree.
I propped myself up on my elbow, fetched the package from the bedside table and regarded its contents once more.
There could be no mistake, especially when a thing like that was addressed to me.
I had accepted the special delivery, stuffed it into my jacket pocket, opened it at my leisure.
Then I saw that it was the sixth, and I'd gotten sick and called things to a halt.
It was a tri-dee picture of Kathy, all in white, and it was dated as developed a month ago.
Kathy had been my first wife, maybe the only woman I'd ever loved, and she'd been dead for over five hundred years. I'll explain that last part by and by.
I studied the thing closely. The sixth such thing I'd received in as many months. Of different people, all of them dead. For ages.
Rocks and blue sky behind her, that's all.
It could have been taken anywhere where there were rocks and a blue sky. It could easily have been a fake, for there are people around who can fake almost anything these days.
I am a coward.
Now, there are a lot of things that scare me, and they are all of them things over which I have little or no control, like the Big Tree.
I propped myself up on my elbow, fetched the package from the bedside table and regarded its contents once more.
There could be no mistake, especially when a thing like that was addressed to me.
I had accepted the special delivery, stuffed it into my jacket pocket, opened it at my leisure.
Then I saw that it was the sixth, and I'd gotten sick and called things to a halt.
It was a tri-dee picture of Kathy, all in white, and it was dated as developed a month ago.
Kathy had been my first wife, maybe the only woman I'd ever loved, and she'd been dead for over five hundred years. I'll explain that last part by and by.
I studied the thing closely. The sixth such thing I'd received in as many months. Of different people, all of them dead. For ages.
Rocks and blue sky behind her, that's all.
It could have been taken anywhere where there were rocks and a blue sky. It could easily have been a fake, for there are people around who can fake almost anything these days.