"Ellison-SunkenCathedral" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

this place. To some Mars, perhaps; but never to this Mars, this Atlantis, to
which we fled. In fairness, they left the legend. Just to tantalize. It was a
debt they felt, a debt we still feel. An even break, if you get what I mean. If
the world changes -- it hasn't, has it? --"

Dennis sighed and shook his head.

"Ah. Well, then . . . if the world does change, and people change, and the
legend draws them to us, we'll take them in. We took you in, didn't we?" Dennis
smiled. "But not otherwise.

"Otherwise . . . they'll have to shoulder their own destiny. If we could do it,
why shouldn't they? We all come from the same egg."

He stared at his father, knowing all was not as it seemed.

The explanations were shimmering, insubstantial, missed a beat here and there.

His father looked at him with unbent affection, and said gently, "And I? Am I
your father? Well, perhaps and perhaps not exactly. But I'll do. I am -- really
and truly -- one of the many possible men your father would have become, had he
been accorded the chance. I'm a good chance at your father."

"Am I dead?"

"Ah. That question. You ask it a little less quickly than most of the cargo she
brings us: But . . . yes, that question again."

"Am I? Am I dead?"

"Not an important consideration. Probably not. But maybe you are. So what? Does
it really matter a hoot in hell? Live, dead, you're in a warm place with
wonderful things happening. We've got the opportunity denied us back where you
came from, the opportunity to get to know each other. Isn't that something
you've always wanted? Haven't you always cried in your heart that we never got
to talk about everything that mattered?"

"Yes. But --"

His father spread his hands and gave him that spiffy smile. "Buts keep coming,
Dennis. They never stop. And let me tell you a thing: even if you knew someone
you loved, like your father, for instance, knew he was dying, and you sat by his
bedside for six months before he passed on, and you said everything you'd ever
wanted to say, tied off all the loose ends, made all the little wry
observations, shared every experience you'd ever had, the both of you . . . and
you got said every last thing there was to say, about love and family and how
much you'd miss me . . . I promise you that the moment I'd closed my eyes and
gone away, you'd think of something you left out, something desperate to be
said, and you'd rue the moment for the rest of your life.