"Barry N. Malzberg - A Galaxy Called Rome" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

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 A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg



Her condition rattling in the hold of the ship as it moves on
tachyonic drive seems to approximate theirs; although they are
deprived of consciousness, that quality seems to be almost
irrelevant to the condition of hyperspace, and if there were any
way that she could bridge their mystery, she might well address
them. As it is, she must settle for imaginary dialogues and for
long, quiescent periods when she will watch the monitors, watch
the rainbow of hyperspace, the collision of the spectrum, and
say nothing whatsoever.
Saying nothing will not do, however, and the fact is that Lena
talks incessantly at times, if only to herself. This is good because
the story should have much dialogue; dramatic incident is best
impelled through straightforward characterization, and Lena's
compulsive need, now and then, to state her condition and its
relation to the spaces she occupies will satisfy this need.

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 A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg



In her conversation, of course, she often addresses the
embalmed. “Consider,” she says to them, some of them dead
eight hundred years, others dead weeks, all of them stacked in
the hold in relation to their status in life and their ability to
hoard assets to pay for the process that will return them their
lives, “Consider what's going on here,” pointing through the
hold, the colors gleaming through the portholes onto her wrist,
colors dancing in the air, her eyes quite full and maddened in
this light, which does not indicate that she is mad but only that
the condition of hyperspace itself is insane, the Michelson-Morley
effect having a psychological as well as physical reality here.
“Why it could be me dead and in the hold and all of you here in
the dock watching the colors spin, it's all the same, all the same
faster than light,” and indeed the twisting and sliding effects of



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 A Galaxy Called Rome by Barry N. Malzberg



the tachyonic drive are such that at the moment of speech what
Lena says is true.