"Ellison, Harlan - Deathbird, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

' B. Belief in supreme deities has waned.
C. There never was a God to begin with.
D. Thou art God.
3. Ecology is another name for:
A. Mother love.
B. Enlightened self-interest.
C. A good health salad with Granola.
D. God.
4. Which of these phrases most typifies the profound.
est love:
A. Don't leave me with strangers.
B. I love you.
C. God is love.
D. Use the needle.
5. Which of these powers do we usually associate with
God:
A. Power.
B. Love.
C. Humanity.
D. Docility.
20
None of the above.
Starlight shone in the eyes of the Deathbird and its s passage through the night cast a shadow on the Moon.
21
Nathan Stack raised his hands and around them the air was still as the palace fell crashing. They were untouched. Now you know all there is to know, Snake said, sinking to one knee as though worshiping. There was no one there to worship but Nathan Stack.
"Was he always mad?"
From the first.
"Then those who gave our world to him were mad, `° and your race was mad to allow it."
Snake had no answer.
"Perhaps it was supposed to be like this," Stack said. He reached down and lifted Snake to his feet, and he touched the shadow creature's head. "Friend," he said.
Snake's race was incapable of tears. He said, 1 have waited longer than you can know for that word.
"I'm sorry it comes at the end."
Perhaps it was supposed to be like this.
Then there was a swirling of air, a scintillance in the ruined palace, and the owner of the mountain, the owner of the ruined Earth came to them in a burning bush.
AGAIN, SNAKE? AGAIN YOU ANNOY ME?
The time for toys is ended.
NATHAN STACK YOU BRING TO STOP ME? I SAY WHEN THE TIME IS ENDED. 1 SAY, AS I'VE ALWAYS SAID.
Then, to Nathan Stack:
GO AWAY. FIND A PLACE TO HIDE UNTIL I COME FOR YOU.
Stack ignored the burning bush. He waved his hand and the cone of safety in which they stood vanished. "Let's find him, first, then I know what to do."
The Deathbird sharpened its talons on the night wind and sailed down through emptiness toward the cinder of the Earth.
22
Nathan Stack had once contracted pneumonia. He had lain on the operating table as the surgeon made the small incision in the chest wall. Had he not been stubborn, had lie not continued working around the clock while the pneumonic infection developed into empyema, he would never have had to go under the knife, even for an operation as safe as a thoractomy. But he was a Stack, and so he lay on the operating table as the rubber tube was inserted into the chest cavity to drain off the pus in the pleural cavity, and heard someone speak his name.
NATHAN STACK.
He heard it, from far off, across an Arctic vastness; heard it echoing over and over, down an endless corridor; as the knife sliced.
NATHAN STACK.
He remembered Lilith, with hair the color of dark wine. He remembered taking hours to die beneath a rock slide as his hunting companions in the pack ripped apart the remains of the bear and ignored his grunted moans for help. He remembered the impact of the crossbow bolt as it ripped through his hauberk and split his chest and he died at Agincourt. He remembered the icy water of the Ohio as it closed over his
head and the flatboat disappearing without his mates noticing his loss. He remembered the mustard gas that ate his lungs and trying to crawl toward a farmhouse near Verdun. He remembered looking directly into the flash of the bomb and feeling the flesh of his face melt away. He remembered Snake coming to him in the board room and husking him like corn from his body. He remembered sleeping in the molten core of the Earth for a quarter of a million years.
Across the dead centuries he heard his mother pleading with him to set her free, to end her pain. Use the needle. Her voice mingled with the voice of the Earth crying out in endless pain. at her flesh that had been ripped away, at her rivers turned to arteries of dust, at her rolling hills and green fields slagged to greenglass and ashes. The voices of his mother and the mother that was Earth became one, and mingled to become Snake's voice telling him he was the one man in the world-the last man in the world-who could end the terminal case the Earth had become.
Use the needle. Put the suffering Earth out of its misery. It belongs to you now.