"Eric Brown - The Disciples Of Apollo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

"For two days beforehand you'll feel drowsy, lethargic."
"And pain?"
"I can assure you that your condition is quite painless."
"I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies."
"There is a retreat for sufferers of the Syndrome. Because of the highly
unusual nature of the disease, you are advised to spend your final weeks
there. Of course, you can go before then, if you wish. Your family will be
able to visit you-"
"I have no family."
"In that case Farrow Island might be perfect."

Between the time of diagnosis and the actual realisation that he was going
to die, Maitland passed through a period of disbelief. There is a
difference between the intellectual knowledge of one's eventual end, and
the sudden sentence of death. Grief came one morning when he awoke and
knew that his awakenings were numbered, and as he watched the dawn he
realised that soon the sun would rise without his continued presence to
witness it; grief filled his chest with nausea and suffocated him, and he
turned like a loner in a crowd for someone on whom he might unburden his
anguish and regret. There was no one, and this compounded his pain. At
times in the past Maitland had managed to convince himself that he could
do without the usual human involvements that most people took for granted.
Yet now, with the imminence of his extinction, he realised that no one
could live - or die - without having shared in some experience of
affection, even love. He cursed himself for so aloofly denying down the
years the inner voice that had cried out for human contact, cursed the
coward in him that had shied from the trauma of new experience with the
excuse that he had existed for so long without it... It came to him with
the intensity of an cerebral scream that now it was too late. He had no
chance of finding in six months that which had eluded him for a lifetime.
He would die alone, as he had lived, and whereas to live alone was easy,
to die alone, with so much guilt and remorse, and yearning for a somehow
altered past, he knew would be beyond endurance.

Then, however, he passed through this phase of anger and entered a period
of passive resignation, and he saw his death as the inevitable consequence
of a life lived as he had lived it. He would gain nothing from regret, he
told himself; his former self was a stranger whose actions he had no way
of changing. He could only accept his fate, and anticipate anything that
might lie beyond. He recalled the doctor's recommendation, and made
arrangements to leave.
In the following weeks Maitland said goodbye to his colleagues at the
university, making the excuse that he was taking a short vacation. He sold
his house and all his possessions, his books and his classical record
collection. He felt a buoyant sense of relief when at last his house was
empty. Since the diagnosis, he had been troubled at the thought of his
material possessions remaining in situ after his death, mocking him; it
was as if the acquisitions of a lifetime somehow circumscribed the
parameters of his physical existence, and would bear mute testimony to his
non-existence when he died.