"Robert F. Young - Abyss of Tartarus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Consider the whale. Remark this awesome leviathan of time and space. Before its capture its skin
was meteorpocked and creviced, its vast belly a spelaean labyrinth. Its ganglia were two, one of which its
captors overlooked. But when the first was blown up, the second was impaired, and the whale was more
dead than alive when it was towed into the orbital shipyards of Altair IV. There it underwent conversion
and became almost a ship. Its surface is burnished now and inlaid with portscopes. Manmade locks
provide access to its belly; lifeboat bays nestle on either flank. The spelaean labyrinth has become a
complex of decks and cabins, staterooms and holds. There is a bridge equipped with all the latest
astrogation instruments. A self-tending hydroponic garden assures a constant supply of oxygen, and
self-tending machines provide a mean temperature of 70° Fahrenheit and an undeviating gravity of 1.
There is a plentifully stocked galley. A sealed-in hydraulic system brings water, hot and cold, to a
hundred different taps. The only segments of itself that the whale can call its own are its second ganglion,
its open-hearth stomach and its drive-tissue.
A whale? No, it cannot properly be called a whale. But it cannot properly be called a ship either.
What ship ever existed that could see inside itself and simultaneously see parsecs away? That could with
equal ease ply the Sea of Space and plumb the Sea of Time? That could think with logic absolute? No, it
can be called neither ship nor whale. It can only be called "Starfinder's whale" after the man who
repaired its second ganglion and freed it from the orbital shipyards, the very man who stands now on its
bridge, its captain and sole passenger, staring into the main viewscreen at the Sea of Time.

Consider Starfinder. Remark his classic pose as he stands staring into time. It is the pose of a man
condemned—not by his peers but by himself. For there is blood on his hands—the blood of the
Terraltairan woman whom he loved and murdered in his bed. He killed her because she was killing him—
destroyed her with his naked hands as she would have-destroyed him with her naked body. But though
the deed may have been rightfully done, he is still responsible for it, and the blood that stains his hands
refuses to go away.
Once blood of a different kind stained his hands—the blood of spacewhales. For he was a Jonah—a
professional killer of whales. He entered into their bellies and blew up the huge blue roses of their
brains—their ganglia—in order that they might be made into ships. And then the slaughter sickened him
and he wanted to die and nearly did, and he killed no more whales. Then he found this whale, which was
supposed to be dead but was not, because it had two ganglia and only one had been destroyed. He
repaired the second, and the act cleansed him of the residue of guilt that still remained; but the new blood
was already on his hands and now it would not go away.
Am I never to know peace? Perhaps it waits for me in the past. I will look for it there. But I
will look for it here first, although I'm sure I will never find it. Here, in the Sea of Time . . .

Consider the Sea of Time. Remark this paradox of the ages. For if it can be said that it contains no
space as such, it can be said that it contains no time either. It consists of pure time, and pure time bears
no affinity to conventional time. It is neither a composite of moments nor a succession of events. It is
timeless time—an interreality that holds conventional reality together. It is not new. Man discovered it
early in his history. But in his naivete he mistook it for something else and gave it geographical
coordinates. Ignorant of its true nature, he did not understand that geographically it does
not—cannot—exist. Then man became sophisticated and lost track of and when he looked for it again it
was gone.
In aspect, the Sea of Time presents a stern and dismal countenance, but it is not without beauty. The
tenuous half-real crags that rear up out of dark abysmal depths are limned at their crests by a pale gold
luminescence that emanates from nowhere, and surreal crimson light creeps partway down their torn and
precipitous slopes and blends subtly into the blackness of the depths. Fragments of gray clouds hover in
the sunless skies, resembling gigantic gray eagles poised in midnight and great gray gulls preparing to
dive. Yes, beauty resides in the Sea of Time and, since the whale's passage is bereft of apparent motion,
the beauty is rendered all the more intense. But it is lost upon Star-finder. He sees the Sea of Time as the