"Brian Lumley - Psychomech 03 - Psychamok" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

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subsequent purchaser.
For Les.
May his cup ever flood over.

na.ture (na-char) n. 1: The character, constitution, or essential traits of a person, thing, or class, especially if
original rather than acquired. 2: The physical or psychic constitution of characters or persons or things,
whether native or acquired. 3: The entire material universe and its phenomena . . .
Dictionary definition.
There are minds precisely so sensitive as a thread of melted lead: every breath will fret and trouble them:
and how about the hurricane? For such this scheme of things is clearly no fit habitation, but a Machine of
Death, a baleful Immense. Too cruel to some is the rushing shriek of Being - they cannot stand the world.
Let each look well to his own little shred of existence, I say, and leave the monstrous Automaton alone!
M. P. Shiel, The House of Sounds.
Resume One:
Psychomech
For each force there exists a counterforce, and every action has its reaction. For darkness there is light, for
day night. Time is measured in space and space in time, and neither may exist without the other. These are
Laws of Nature which apply to all matter, to every living creature in every biosphere, and to every psychic
emanation -every thought - in the great Psychosphere which encompasses all the worlds of space and time
wherever life exists.
And the Principle Law is this: There Shall Be A Balance. For laughter there shall be sorrow, and for life
death. That is to say: for every birth or emergence there shall be a life or existence, running its course and
coming to an end. With time tipping the scales, even mountains die and turn into sand . . .
. . . Except that in 1952 a man was born on the planet Earth who would break that Prime Law. His name
was Richard Allan Garrison, and his destiny was immortality.
Garrison's childhood was never easy, rarely happy. Life's knocks were hard; he was shaped on an anvil of
pain. Finally the loss of his mother, the only one who ever cared or mattered, finished the job. Dipped naked
in his sorrow, he emerged case-hardened. Cynical, a little - a rebel, somewhat - and bitter, yes. But not
completely.
Garrison's flesh was weak as all flesh, but his will was unbendable. He had taught himself a trick: he could
take disappointments, hurts and frustrations, and absorb them, drown them in the deep dark wells at the
back of his mind. A trick, a defence mechanism. One which would serve him well.
But there were other tricks in Garrison's mind of which he was unaware . . . until September 1972, in
Northern Ireland. By then he was a Corporal in the Royal Military Police, a 'target', as he and every other
soldier out there thought of themselves. Boots and a uniform, a flak-jacket and a Sterling sub-machine-gun,
and eyes in the back of your head if you fancy a pint in the mess tonight.
September 1972, and a dream - or nightmare - that persisted in bothering Garrison. A warning, an omen, a
glimpse into a strange future, the dream had concerned a man-God, a dog and a Machine . . . and Garrison
himself. And it had ended with a bomb. While its repetition worried him he could hardly hope to recognize it
for what it was; in Northern Ireland many men dreamed of bombs. But Garrison's bomb was real. . .
Thomas Schroeder was in Belfast, too, on business. Millionaire industrialist, ex-Nazi, arms manufacturer,
international financier, he was there with his aide, Willy Koenig, and with his family. Schroeder's young
wife, their baby son and the child's nanny, had rooms in a hotel in an assumed 'safe area' of the city. From
there, upon conclusion of his business, they were to .fly to Australia; a holiday in the sun. That holiday