JК
Isle Of The Dead :: Zelazny Roger
Страница: 6 из 110Anything over your first billion becomes metaphysical. I used to think of all the vicious things I was probably financing without realizing it. Then I came up with my Big Tree philosophy and decided the hell with the whole bit.
There is a Big Tree as old as human society, because that's what it is, and the sum total of its leaves, attached to all its branches and twigs, represents the amount of money that exists. There are names written on these leaves, and some fall off and new ones grow on, so that in a few seasons all the names have been changed. But the Tree stays pretty much the same: bigger, yes; and carrying on the same life functions as always, in pretty much the same way, too. I once went through a time when I tried to cut out all the rot I could find in the Tree. I found that as soon as I cut out a section in one place, it would occur somewhere else, and I had to sleep sometime. Hell, you can't even give money away properly these days; and the Tree is too big to bend like a _bonsai_ in a bucket and so alter its growth. So I just let it grow on its merry way now, my name on all those leaves, some of them withered and sere and some bright with the first-green, and I try to enjoy myself, swinging around those branches and wearing a name that I don't see written all around me. So much for me and the Big Tree. The story of how I came to own so much greenery might provoke an even funnier, more elaborate and less botanical metaphor. If so, let's make it later. Too many, and look what happened to poor Johnny Donne: he started thinking he wasn't an Islande, and he's out there at the bottom of Tokyo Bay now and it doesn't diminish me one bit.
I began briefing S & F on everything my staff should do and not do in my absence. After many playbacks and much mindracking, I think I covered everything. I reviewed my last will and testament, saw nothing I wanted changed. I shifted certain papers to destructboxes and left orders that they be activated if this or that happened. I sent an alert to one of my representatives on Aldebaran V, to let him know that if a man named Lawrence J-for-John Conner happened to pass that way and needed anything, it was his, and an emergency i.d. code, in case I had to be identified as me. Then I noticed that close to four hours had passed and I was hungry.
"How long to sunset, rounded to the nearest minute?" I asked S & F.
"Forty-three minutes," came its neuter-voiced reply through the hidden speaker.
"I will dine on the East Terrace in precisely thirty-three minutes," I said, checking my chronometer.
There is a Big Tree as old as human society, because that's what it is, and the sum total of its leaves, attached to all its branches and twigs, represents the amount of money that exists. There are names written on these leaves, and some fall off and new ones grow on, so that in a few seasons all the names have been changed. But the Tree stays pretty much the same: bigger, yes; and carrying on the same life functions as always, in pretty much the same way, too. I once went through a time when I tried to cut out all the rot I could find in the Tree. I found that as soon as I cut out a section in one place, it would occur somewhere else, and I had to sleep sometime. Hell, you can't even give money away properly these days; and the Tree is too big to bend like a _bonsai_ in a bucket and so alter its growth. So I just let it grow on its merry way now, my name on all those leaves, some of them withered and sere and some bright with the first-green, and I try to enjoy myself, swinging around those branches and wearing a name that I don't see written all around me. So much for me and the Big Tree. The story of how I came to own so much greenery might provoke an even funnier, more elaborate and less botanical metaphor. If so, let's make it later. Too many, and look what happened to poor Johnny Donne: he started thinking he wasn't an Islande, and he's out there at the bottom of Tokyo Bay now and it doesn't diminish me one bit.
I began briefing S & F on everything my staff should do and not do in my absence. After many playbacks and much mindracking, I think I covered everything. I reviewed my last will and testament, saw nothing I wanted changed. I shifted certain papers to destructboxes and left orders that they be activated if this or that happened. I sent an alert to one of my representatives on Aldebaran V, to let him know that if a man named Lawrence J-for-John Conner happened to pass that way and needed anything, it was his, and an emergency i.d. code, in case I had to be identified as me. Then I noticed that close to four hours had passed and I was hungry.
"How long to sunset, rounded to the nearest minute?" I asked S & F.
"Forty-three minutes," came its neuter-voiced reply through the hidden speaker.
"I will dine on the East Terrace in precisely thirty-three minutes," I said, checking my chronometer.