"Gene Wolfe - The Horars of War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

THE HORARS OF WAR
by Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe is an engineer who served in the United States Army during the Korean War. He
knows engineering--and he knows war, and with this joint knowledge has composed a story that
has more than a little to say about both. It is a fine example of second-generation science fiction,
the examining in greater detail, many times with greater art, of the older and more familiar
themes of this medium. In the primitive, or flaky-pulp, days it was enough to cook up an android
and have him step, steaming, from the pot. But Mr. Wolfe, with sharp skill, goes a great deal
further.




The three friends in the trench looked very much alike as they labored in the rain. Their hairless skulls
were slickly naked to it, their torsos hairless too, and supple with smooth muscles that ran like oil under
the wet gleam.
The two, who really were 2909 and 2911, did not mind the jungle around them although they
detested the rain that rusted their weapons, and the snakes and insects, and hated the Enemy. But the
one called 2910, the real as well as the official leader of the three, did; and that was because 2909 and
2911 had stainless-steel bones; but there was no 2910 and there had never been.
The camp they held was a triangle. In the center, the CP-Aid Station where Lieutenant Kyle and Mr.
Brenner slept: a hut of ammo cases packed with dirt whose lower half was dug into the soggy earth.
Around it were the mortal pit (NE), the recoilless rifle pit (NW), and Pinocchio's pit (S); and beyond
these were the. straight lines of the trenches: First Platoon, Second Platoon, Third Platoon (the platoon of
the three). Outside of which were the primary wire and an antipersonnel mine field.
And outside that was the jungle. But not completely outside. The jungle set up outposts of its own of
swift-sprouting bamboo and elephant grass, and its crawling creatures carried out untiring patrols of the
trenches. The jungle sheltered the Enemy, taking him to its great fetid breast to be fed while it sopped up
the rain and of it bred its stinging gnats and centipedes.
An ogre beside him, 2911 drove his shovel into the ooze filling the trench, lifted it to shoulder height,
dumped it; 2910 did the same thing in his turn, then watched the rain work on the scoop of mud until it
was slowly running back into the trench again. Following his eyes 2911 looked at him and grinned. The
HORAR's face was broad, hairless, flat-nosed and high-cheeked; his teeth were pointed and white like a
big dog's. And he, 2910, knew that that face was his own. Exactly his own. He told himself it was a
dream, but he was very tired and could not get out.
Somewhere down the trench the bull voice of 2900 announced the evening meal and the others threw
down their tools and jostled past toward the bowls of steaming mash, but the thought of food nauseated
2910 in his fatigue, and he stumbled into the bunker he shared with 2909 and 2911. Flat on his air
mattress he could leave the nightmare for a time: return to the sane world of houses and sidewalks, or
merely sink into the blessed nothingness that was far better...
Suddenly he was bolt upright on the cot, blackness still in his eyes even while his fingers groped with
their own thought for his helmet and weapon. Bugles were blowing from the edge of the jungle, but he
had time to run his hand under the inflated pad of the mattress and reassure himself that his hidden notes
were safe before 2900 in the trench outside yelled, "Attack! Fall out! Man your firing points!"
It was one of the stock jokes, one of the jokes so stock, in fact, that it had ceased to be anything
anyone laughed at, to say "Horar" your firing point (or whatever it was that according to the book should
be "manned"). The HORARS in the squad he led used the expression to 2910 just as he used it with
them, and when 2900 never employed it the omission had at first unsettled him. But 2900 did not really
suspect. 2900 just took his rank seriously.