"T. K. F. Weisskopf & Greg Cox Ed. - Tomorrow Sucks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weisskopf T.K.F)

"I," he said, addressing a poplar tree that was shaken by the wind, "am an
anachronism." He smiled faintly.


He looked at the graveyard. It was cold and empty. All of the stones had been
ripped up and piled like so many flat bricks, one atop another, in the far corner of
the wrought iron fence. This had been going on for two endless weeks. In his deep
secret coffin he had heard the heartless, wild stirrings as the men jabbed the earth
with cold spades and tore out the coffins and carried away the withered ancient
bodies to be burned. Twisting with fear in his coffin, he had waited for them to
come to him.
Today they had arrived at his coffin. But—late. They had dug down to within an
inch of the lid. Five o'clock bell, time for quitting. Home to supper. The workers had
gone off. Tomorrow they would finish the job, they said, shrugging into their coats.
Silence had come to the emptied tomb-yard.
Carefully, quietly, with a soft rattling of sod, the coffin lid had lifted.
William Lantry stood trembling now, in the last cemetery on Earth.
"Remember?" he asked himself, looking at the raw earth. "Remember those
stories of the last man on earth? Those stories of men wandering in ruins, alone?
Well you, William Lantry, are a switch on the old story. Do you know that? You are
the last dead man in the whole damned world!"
There were no more dead people. Nowhere in any land was there a dead person.
Impossible? Lantry did not smile at this. No, not impossible at all in this foolish,
sterile, unimaginative, antiseptic age of cleansings and scientific methods! People
died, oh my god, yes. B u t dead people? Corpses? They didn't exist!
What happened to dead people?
The graveyard was on a hilt. William Lantry walked through the dark burning night
until he reached the edge of the graveyard and looked down upon the new town of
Salem. It was all illumination, all colour. Rocket ships cut fire above it, crossing the
sky to all far ports of earth.
In his grave the new violence of this future world had driven down and seeped
into William Lantry. He had been bathed in it for years. He knew all about it, with a
hating dead man's knowledge of such things.
Most important of all, he knew what these fools did with dead men.
He lifted his eyes. In the centre of the town a massive stone finger pointed at the
stars. It was three hundred feet high and fifty feet across. There was a wide entrance
and a drive in front of it.
In the town, theoretically, thought William Lantry, say you have a dying man. In a
moment he will be dead. What happens? No sooner is his pulse cold than a
certificate is flourished, made out, his relatives pack him into a car-beetle and drive
him swiftly to—
The Incinerator!
That functional finger, that Pillar of Fire pointing at the stars. Incinerator. A
functional, terrible name. But truth is truth in this future world.
Like a stick of kindling your Mr. Dead Man is shot into the furnace.
Flume!
William Lantry looked at the top of the gigantic pistol shoving at the stars. A small
pennant of smoke issued from the top.
 There's where your dead people go.
"Take care of yourself, William Lantry," he murmured. "You're the last one, the