Odnośniki
- Indeks
- Frederick Marshall Brown [Ravaging Myths 01] Ravaging Myths (pdf)(1)
- Gordon Dickson Forever Man
- Frederik Pohl Heechee 4 Annals of the Heechee
- Frederic Pohl Cykl Saga o Heechach (4) Kroniki HeechĂłw
- Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson Starchild Trilogy
- Ann Justine Reveur Dotrć do ciebie
- Ch14
- Harry Harrison Stars And Stripes 03 Stars & Stripes Triumphant v3.0 (lit)
- Gordon Dickson Hour of the Gremlins
- Chang Eileen MiśÂośÂć jak pole bitwy
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- effulla.pev.pl
only for people who've been machine-stored, so most likely they'll have been dead first."
Then the change in McClune's expression puzzlement to shock to outright anger registered with her
at last. "Hey," she said, her grin placatory, "don't look like that. The Here After deal's kind of weird, sure,
but when you look at the alternatives it's not so bad, is it?"
And then she frowned, puzzled, as McClune's expression softened, the rage draining away, the vast,
heart-warming, meaningless smile replacing it. "Bad?" he said, considering. "Why, no, Ms. le Brun, it isn't
justbad. It is totally, blasphemously, hopelessly evil in all its parts, and I have prayed a thousand times, on
my knees, that those responsible for it should boil in a lake of fire for all eternity in the nethermost reaches
of Hell."
The smile broadened still more as he turned and walked away. He knew the value of making a good
exit, so hedid not stop there but kepton making it, right out the creaky old door.
Outside the twilight was warm and the breeze gentle. He glanced at the Heechees' mound of rags,
thought briefly of kicking them to the four winds, decided against it as an interior rumble suggested a
more immediately important project. He headed toward the latrine.
A good bowel movement was after all a blessing. He took his time about it. By the time he was returning
to the others a couple of stars had begun to peep out overhead. Most of the world thought those first
glimmers of evening starlight rather pretty, if they thought of them at all. To Orbis McClune they carried a
load of guilt. It was they that had lured the world to spaceflight, and thus to the Heechee and all their
wickedness.
But they were far away, and on this world McClune was almost at peace as he pushed the door aside
and went in. As much peace as the tormented soul of Orbis McClune ever had, at least.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
It didn't last. Cara le Brun was sitting in a corner of the room, whispering to her machine mind but with
her eyes on him and her expression absorbed. She stopped talking, got up and walked toward him,
looking unexpectedly apologetic. At once McClune's defenses went up. He was wary of surprises, which
in his experience seldom portended anything good.
Not this time, either. "Hey, Orbis," she said, reaching out to put her hand on his shoulder. Before he
could shake it off she was going on: "Listen, I had Barb check you out. I'm sorry if I said anything wrong.
I didn't know you had a wife in Here After storage."
VI
The next morning's sun was no hotter, McClune's unsteady perch on the bench beneath the great,
frowning statue no more wearying than before, but Orbis McClune felt them more. His voice was just as
commanding, his threats and warnings as plangent as ever. However, the old fire in his heart was
quenched by the unwanted, long-suppressed memories of an ancient hurt... the one named Rowena.
Rowena. The beautiful. The decorous. The, well, the loved ... or at least the very nearly loved as nearly
as it was in Orbis McClune's power to love anything mortal. Until the decorous became unruly, and paid
for itwith herlife, and then had not the grace tobeonce and for all trulydead but went on to be a constant
hurt in McClune's.
The source of that unmitigatable hurt was there before him, right across the street. It was the technicians
of Here After that had made it to Rowena's crashed car almost as soon as the ambulance, in time to get
her dying consent and transform her personality hersoul! into nothing more tangible than a cloud of
electrons captured within a machine. As she still was at this moment. And always would be, as far into
the future as human life continued to exist on Earth.
McClune's voice cracked, right in the middle of one of his favorite descriptions of the eternities of torture
that awaited the damned. A couple of the idlers who made up his audience looked amused, but he caught
himself and went right on. That is, his mouth continued to shape words and the words became
well-reasoned arguments, but the arguments were merely the ones he had voiced so many times before.
Rowena should not have done it.
Her whole life proved that. Her clergyman-father was almost as strict in his beliefs as McClune
himself strict enough to have named his daughter after one of the purest maidens in Sir Walter Scott's
long oeuvre, and to have insisted she model herself after that person. Rowena had been brought up to be
a perfect wife for, say, the early eighteenth century. And for the first three years of their marriage those
were the qualities she displayed, to her husband and to the world.
It was the fourth year that had been the killer.
All the time he was telling his audience the instructive story of Matthew the tax collector, the one who
became the servant of the Lord and changed from taking the worthless coin of Mammon to giving, giving [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]