"Henry Kuttner - Clash by Night (SS Collection) UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

Scott shook his head slightly. 'Death isn't important either. It's an automatic cancellation of values. Or, rather-'He hesitated, seeking words. 'In this life you can plan, you can work out values, because they're all based on certain conditions. On - let's say - arithmetic. Death is a change to a different plane of conditions, quite unknown. Arithmetical rules don't apply as such to geometry.'
'You think death has its rules?'
'It may be a lack of rules, Ilene. One lives realizing that life is subject to death; civilization is based on that. That's why civilization concentrates on the race instead of the individual. Social self-preservation.'
She looked at him gravely. 'I didn't think a Free Companion could theorize that way.'
Scott closed his eyes, relaxing. 'The Keeps know nothing about Free Companions. They don't want to. We're men. Intelligent men. Our techniques are as great as the scientists under the Domes.'
'But they work for war.'
'War's necessary,' Scott said. 'Now, anyway.'
'How did you get into it? Should I ask?'
He laughed a little at that. 'Oh, I've no dark secrets in my past. I'm not a runaway murderer. One- drifts. I was born in Australia Keep. My father was a tech, but my grandfather had been a soldier. I guess it was in my blood. I tried various trades and professions. Meaningless. I wanted something that . . . hell, I don't know. Something, maybe that needs all of a man. Fighting does. It's like a religion. Those cultists - Men of the New Judgment - they're fanatics, but you can see that their religion is the only thing that matters to them.'
'Bearded, dirty men with twisted minds, though.'
'It happens to be a religion based on false premises. There are others, appealing to different types. But religion was too passive for me, in these days.'
Ilene examined his harsh face. 'You'd have preferred the church militant- the Knights of Malta, fighting Saracens.'
'I suppose. I had no values. Anyhow, I'm a fighter.'
'Just how important is it to you? The Free Companions?'
Scott opened his eyes and grinned at the girl. He looked unexpectedly boyish.
'Damn little, really. It has emotional appeal. Intellectually, I know that it's a huge fake. Always has been. As absurd as the Men of the new Judgment. Fighting's doomed. So we've no real purpose. I suppose most of us know there's no future for the Free Companions. In a few hundred years- well!'
'And still you go on. Why? It isn't money.'
'No. There is a ... a drunkenness to it. The ancient Norsemen had their berserker madness. We have something similar. To a Dooneman, his group is father, mother, child, and God Almighty. He fights the other Free Companions when he's paid to do so, but he doesn't hate the others. They serve the same toppling idol. And it is toppling, Ilene. Each battle we win or lose brings us closer to the end. We fight to protect the culture that eventually will wipe us out. The Keeps- when they finally unify, will they need a military arm? I can see the trend. If war was an essential part of civilization, each Keep would maintain its own military. But they shut us out- a necessary evil. If they would end war now!' Scott's fist unconsciously clenched. 'So many men would find happier places in Venus- undersea. But as long as the Free Companions exist, there'll be new recruits.'
Ilene sipped her cocktail, watching the grey chaos of clouds flow like a tide around them. In the dimly luminous light Scott's face seemed like dark stone, flecks of brightness showing in his eyes. She touched his hand gently.
'You're a soldier, Brian. You wouldn't change.'
His laugh was intensely bitter. 'Like hell I wouldn't, Mistress Ilene Kane! Do you think fighting's just pulling a trigger? I'm a military strategist. That took ten years. Harder cramming than I'd have had in a Keep Tech-Institute. I have to know everything about war from trajectories to mass psychology. This is the greatest science
the System has ever known, and the most useless. Because war will die in a few centuries at most. Ilene - you've never seen a Free Company's fort. It's science, marvellous science, aimed at military ends only. We have our psych-specialists. We have our engineers, who plan everything from ordnance to the frictional quotient on flitterboats. We have the foundries and mills. Each fortress is a city made for war, as the Keeps are made for social progress.'
'As complicated as that?'
'Beautifully complicated and beautifully useless. There are so many of us who realize that. Oh, we fight - it's a poison. We worship the Company - that is an emotional poison. But we live only during wartime. It's an incomplete life. Men in the Keeps have full lives; they have their work, and their relaxations are geared to fit them. We don't fit.'
'Not all the undersea races,' Ilene said. 'There's always the fringe that doesn't fit. At least you have a raison d'etre. You're a soldier. I can't make a lifework out of pleasure. But there's nothing else for me.'
Scott's fingers tightened on hers. 'You're the product of a civilization, at least. I'm left out.'
'With you, Brian, it might be better. For a while. I don't think it would last for long.'
'It might.'
'You think so now. It's quite a horrible thing, feeling yourself a shadow.'
'I know.'
'I want you, Brian,' Ilene said, turning to face him. 'I want you to come to Montana Keep and stay here. Until our experiment fails. I think it'll fail presently. But, perhaps, not for some time. I need your strength. I can show you how to get the most out of this sort of life - how to enter into it. True hedonism. You can give me- companionship perhaps. For me the companionship of hedonists who know nothing else isn't enough.'
Scott was silent. Ilene watched him for a while.
'Is war so important?' she asked at last.
'No,' he said, 'it isn't at all. It's a balloon. And it's empty, I
know that. Honour of the regiment!' Scott laughed. 'I'm not hesitating, really. I've been shut out for a long time. A social unit shouldn't be founded on an obviously doomed fallacy. Men and women are important, nothing else, I suppose.'
'Men and women - or the race?'
'Not the race,' he said with abrupt violence. 'Damn the race! It's done nothing for me. I can fit myself into a new life. Not necessarily hedonism. I'm an expert in several lines; I have to be. I can find work in Montana Keep.'
'If you like. I've never tried. I'm more of a fatalist, I suppose. But . . . what about it, Brian?'
Her eyes were almost luminous, like shining emeralds, in the ghostly light.
'Yes,' Scott said. Til come back. To stay.'
Ilene said, 'Come back? Why not stay now?'
'Because I'm a complete fool, I guess. I'm a key man, and Cine Rhys needs me just now.'
'Is it Rhys or the Company?'
Scott smiled crookedly. 'Not the Company. It's just a job I have to do. When I think how many years I've been slaving, pretending absurdities were important, knowing that I was bowing to a straw dummy- No! I want your life- the son of life I didn't know could exist in the Keeps. I'll be back, Ilene. It's something more important than love. Separately we're halves. Together we may be a complete whole.'
She didn't answer. Her eyes were steady on Scott's. He kissed her.
Before morning bell he was back in the apartment. Jeana had already packed the necessary light equipment. She was asleep, her dark hair cascading over the pillow, and Scott did not waken her. Quietly he shaved, showered, and dressed. A heavy, waiting silence seemed to fill the city like a cup brimmed with stillness.
As he emerged from the bathroom, buttoning his tunic, he saw the table had been let down and two places set at it. Jeana came in, wearing a cool morning frock. She set cups down and poured coffee.
'Morning, soldier,' she said. 'You've time for this, haven't you?'
'Uh-huh.' Scott kissed her, a bit hesitantly. Up till this moment, the breaking with Jeana had seemed easy enough. She would raise no objections. That was the chief reason for free-marriage. However-
She was sitting in the relaxer, sweetening the coffee, opening a fresh celopack of cigarettes. 'Hung over?'