"Stephen Goldin - The Last Ghost & Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

have four years left. And besides, only Congress has the authority to dismiss me."
"But what about the girls? Can't he fire them?"
"Heavens, no! As civilian employees of the Agency, they come under our 'excepted service' status —
they can only be fired for incompetence in the performance of their specified duties. And no one,"
Hawkins smiled, "could ever accuse them of that."
 Nice Place to Visit

This first appeared in Vertex, October 1973.
Looking back, I seem to have some fascination with old deserted cities that can give you your
dreams - but for a very high price. There's such a city in my novel Scavenger Hunt, and a
culmination in A World Called Solitude. But this is the first one that appeared. I wonder what the
scholars will think I'm trying to say.
The boundary of the city lay precisely half a meter from the toes of Ryan's boots. Ryan stood there, in no
particular hurry to cross that line. Fifty centimeters were all that stood between him and possible
madness. He gazed at the city, trying to read something from its inscrutable silhouette — trying, and
failing.
Finally, he pulled the communicator out of his pocket. The cold, metallic, rectangular box felt oddly
comforting in his hand. This was a symbol of Earth, here amid the alienness of this planet. Somehow, the
ship — and even Earth itself — was not quite so distant as long as he held it. Ryan was not an
exceptionally brave man; despite all the propaganda, planetary scouts tended to have their own human
failings and fears. Ryan's fear was loneliness.
He spoke, though, in calm, even tones. His voice went, not to any of the humans on the ship, but to the
JVA model computer that ran it. Human society had become too large, too diversified, too complex for
human minds to grasp, and so mechanical help was needed. Computers had become
father-mother-teacher to the human race. Java-10 was the portable counterpart to the enormous brain
that controlled the Earth.
"I am about to enter the city," Ryan said.
"I needn't stress the importance of caution," answered Java-10. "Five previous expeditions were lost in
there. Try to maintain frequent, if not constant, communications. And remember, if you fail, there will be
no more attempts. The city will have to be destroyed despite its potential value."
"I understand," Ryan said tersely. "Over and out." He clicked off his communicator and stuck it back in
his pocket.
He stood before the boundary and hesitated. Over to the right, his scout ship squatted beside the five
others, primed and ready for instant take-off should the need arise. Behind him, he sensed the desert, dry
and deadly, its dust dunes shifting softly whenever some chance breeze blew across them. Ahead of him
waited the city, sharp in its outline, its beauty, and its utter alienness. Shimmering walls jutted at crazy
angles, seemingly products of a drunken architect's delirium. Fragile, almost fairy structures sprouted
sideways out of one another, sometimes hundreds of meters off the ground. Other buildings, even more
astounding, seemed just to hang suspended in air, with no visible support. Occasionally, a wind touched
the city and set the entire works vibrating like a singing crystal, so that the city seemed to sigh a siren
song.
Men had entered this city, the only one on an otherwise desolate planet, five times before. None of those
men had ever returned. Detectors had shown no life forms whatsoever before men came. Sixteen life
forms registered now — the sixteen men who had vanished within. And now it was Ryan's chance to
make it seventeen.
No one had any idea of who had built this city, or when, or why. All that was known was that it had
swallowed sixteen men, alive yet apparently powerless to escape despite the best armaments Earth could
provide. The city generated a field of unknown energy that radiated outward spherically from the city's
center to a certain distance, and no further. Some of the men who had entered the field had continued
their radio contact with their ships for some time afterward; but the information received had been close