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

on an entire world.
The world did not answer back. A rocket crossed the sky on a rush of flame, like
an Incinerator taking wing.
Footsteps. Lantry hastened to the edge of the cemetery. The diggers, coming
back to finish up their work? No. Just someone, a man, walking by.
As the man came abreast the cemetery gate, Lantry stepped swiftly out. "Good
evening," said the man, smiling.
Lantry struck the man in the face. The man fell. Lantry bent quietly down and hit
the man a killing blow across the neck with the side of his hand.
Dragging the body back into shadow, he stripped it, changed clothes with it. It
wouldn't do for a fellow to go wandering about this future world with ancient
clothing on. He found a small pocket knife in the man's coat; not much of a knife,
but enough if you knew how to handle it properly. He knew how.
He rolled the body down into one of the already opened and exhumed graves. In
a minute he had shovelled dirt down upon it, just enough to hide it. There was little
chance of it being found. They wouldn't dig the same grave twice.
He adjusted himself in his new loose-fitting metallic suit. Fine, fine.
Hating, William Lantry walked down into town, to do battle with the Earth.


II

The Incinerator was open. It never closed. There was a wide entrance, all lighted
up with hidden illumination, there was a helicopter landing table and a beetle drive.
The town itself was dying down after another day of the dynamo. The lights were
going dim, and the only quiet, lighted spot in the town now was the Incinerator.
God, what a practical name, what an unromantic name.
William Lantry entered the wide, well-lighted door. It was an entrance, really; there
were no doors to open or shut. People could go in and out, summer or winter, the
inside was always warm. Warm from the fire that rushed whispering up the high
round flue to where the whirlers, the propellers, the air-jets pushed the leafy grey
ashes on away for a ten mile ride down the sky.
There was the warmth of the bakery here. The halls were floored with rubber
parquet. You couldn't make a noise if you wanted to. Music played in hidden throats
somewhere. Not music of death at all, but music of life and the way the sun lived
inside the Incinerator; or the sun's brother, anyway. You could hear the flame
floating inside the heavy brick wall.
William Lantry descended a ramp. Behind him he heard a whisper and turned in
time to see a beetle stop before the entrance way. A bell rang. The music, as if at a
signal, rose to ecstatic heights. There was joy in it.
From the beetle, which opened from the rear, some attendants stepped carrying a
golden box. It was six feet long and there were sun symbols on it. From another
beetle the relatives of the man in the box stepped and followed as the attendants took
the golden box down a ramp to a kind of altar. On the side of the altar were the
words, "we that were born of the sun return to the sun." The golden box was
deposited upon the altar, the music leaped upward, the Guardian of this place spoke
only a few words, then the attendants picked up the golden box, walked to a
transparent wall, a safety lock also transparent, and opened it. The box was shoved
into the glass slot. A moment later an inner lock opened, the box was injected into
the interior of the flue and vanished instantly in quick flame.