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

stars sex, that demonstration of our perverse and irreplaceable
humanity, would have no role at all. Not for nothing did the
astronauts return to tell us their vision of otherworldliness, not
for nothing did they stagger in their thick landing gear as they
walked toward the colonels’ salute, not for nothing did all of
those marriages, all of those wonderful kids undergo such
terrible strains. There is simply no room for it. It does not fit.
Lena would understand this. “I never thought of sex,” she would
say, “never thought of it once, not even at the end when
everything was around me and I was dancing.”

VIII


Therefore it will be necessary to characterize Lena in some
other way, and that opportunity will only come through the

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moment of crisis, the moment at which the Skipstone is drawn
into the Black Galaxy of the neutron star. This moment will
occur fairly early into the story, perhaps five or six hundred
words deep (her previous life on the ship and impressions of
hyperspace will come in expository chunks interwoven between
sections of ongoing action), and her only indication of what has
happened will be when there is a deep, lurching shiver in the gut
of the ship where the embalmed lay and then she feels herself
falling.
To explain this sensation it is important to explain normal
hyperspace, the skip-drive which is merely to draw the curtains
and to be in a cubicle. There is no sensation of motion in
hyperspace, there could not be, the drive taking the Skipstone
past any concepts of sound or light and into an area where there
is no language to encompass nor glands to register. Were she to

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draw the curtains (curiously similar in their frills and pastels to
what we might see hanging today in lower-middle-class homes
of the kind I inhabit), she would be deprived of any sensation,
but of course she cannot; she must open them to the portholes,
and through them she can see the song of the colors to which I
have previously alluded. Inside, there is a deep and grievous
wretchedness, a feeling of terrible loss (which may explain why