"Seond Inquisition by Joanna Russ" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 6)

beyond it:

"I'm only sixteen."

"You look eighteen," she would say.

"I know," I would say. "I'd like to be eighteen. I'd like to go away to
college. To Radcliffe, I think." ,

She would say nothing, out of surprise.

"Are you reading Wells?" I would say then, leaning against the door
jamb. "I think that's funny. Nobody in this town reads anything; they
just .think about social life. I read a lot, however. I would like to learn
a
great deal."

She would smile then, across the room.

"I did something funny once," I would go on. "I mean funny ha-ha, not
funny peculiar." It was a real line, very popular. "I read The Time
Machine and then I went around asking people were they Eloi or were
they Morlocks; everyone liked it. The point is which you would be if
you could, like being an optimist or a pessimist or do you like- bobbed
hair." Then I would add, "Which are you?" and she would only shrug
and smile a little more. She would prop her chin on one long, long hand
and look into my eyes with her black Egyptian eyes and then she
would say in her curious hoarse voice:

"It is you who must say it first."

"I think," I would say, "that you area Morlock," and sitting on the bed
in my m-other's rented room with The Time Machine open beside her,
she would say:

"You are exactly right. I am a Morlock. I am a Morlock on vacation. I
have come from the last Morlock meeting, which is held out between
the stars in a big goldfish bowl, so all the Morlocks have to cling to the
inside walls like a flock of black bats, some right side up, some upside
down, for there is no up and down there, clinging like a flock of black
crows, like a chestnut burr turned inside out. There are half a thousand
Morlocks and we rule the worlds. My black uniform is in the
wardrobe."

"I knew I was right," I would say.

"You are always right she would say, "and you know the rest of it,
too. You know what murderers we are and how terribly we live. We are
waiting for the big bang
when everything falls over and even the Morlocks will be destroyed;