"James White - Second Ending" - читать интересную книгу автора (White James)

About this book:




"Second Ending" is one of my own favorite stories, and not just because it was voted onto the short
list of five novels for the 1963 Hugo award (Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, a much longer, and
better, story, won it that year). So strongly did I feel about the story that when it was submitted to my
favorite editor and he requested a few changes — including a reduction in length to twenty thousand
words and the introduction of a surviving island of humanity! — I demurred. It was the only time in my
writing career that I said "No" to an editor in such forthright language. After close on a quarter of a
century in the game, I have now learned how to make all my "No's" sound like "Well, maybe's."
Returning to the original question, "Where on Earth do you get those crazy ideas from?", it seems that
in my case they come from unfulfilled ambitions, feelings of injustice, meeting a bedraggled dog or a
beautiful girl, or from a friend with polluted pants. But the simple answer is that all of the ideas have a
solidly terrestrial origin, and so the question answers itself.




SECOND ENDING
By
James White
Version 1.1
Copyright © 1961

Awards: Hugo (nominee)


For Ross the process of awakening was a slow thaw. Gradually there was growing within his mind a
spot of warmth, melting and clearing the long-unused channels of memory and perception. For a time he
knew only that he was somebody and that it was very cold, and then he began to remember other cold
awakenings and the nightmares which followed them. He tried to tell himself that this was all wrong, that
nightmares preceded awakening and not the other way around, but his memory insisted otherwise. It
insisted so strongly that, had such a reaction been physically possible, Ross would have broken into a
sweat of fear. Eventually sound and vision came to him, the icy fog of Deep Sleep cleared and he saw
Beethoven.
Someone had given Beethoven's hair a coat of black enamel, painted the face with a realistic flesh tint
and touched in the eyes with blue, but it was still the same bust which had occupied a place of honor in
Pellew's consulting room. That someone, Ross knew, was in for trouble, because Dr. Pellew was not a
man who took kindly to practical jokes. All at once that line of thought became a very comforting one for
Ross, because it opened up the possibility that the nightmares had been practical jokes also. He seemed
to remember that there had been quite a few jokers in this place, especially on the thirty-first level. But
why such a needlessly cruel trick, and why had they picked him? Who, exactly, were they? What was
this place, what was he doing here, who was Pellew…?
Ross didn't know, exactly. His mental processes were quickening, but he was demanding answers
from a memory which was still woefully incomplete. He sighed audibly, and suddenly Beethoven was
talking to him.
"When the patient has recovered consciousness," Beethoven said in a dry, lecturing voice which was
remarkably like that of Dr. Pellew, "it is important that he make no sudden movements, which at this