"Zelazny, Roger - Angel, Dark Angel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

Should the near-impossible occur, should some being with speed and intrepidity be standing accidentally armed at the moment his name on the roll yonder and up is being shouted, then the remains of the stricken Dark Angel vanish as, with a simultaneous lightning-and-thunder effect, another takes his place, rising, as it were, out of ashes.

The few times that this has occurred, the second has always finished the job.

But this time things were different; and what little remained of seven agents of Morgenguard had lain in cubicles, smoldered, bled, been dead.

==========

“You are the Dark Angel, the Sword of Morgenguard,” she said. “I did not mean to love you.”

“Nor I you, Galatea, and were you only a mortal woman, rather than a retired Angel yourself—the only being whose body would throw back the charge upon me and destroy me, as it did the others—please believe that I would not raise my hand against you.”

“I would like to believe that, Stain.”

“I am going now. You have nothing to fear of me.”

He turned and headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked him.

“Back to my hotel. I will be returning soon, to give a report.”

“What will it say?”

He shook his head and left.

But he knew.

==========

He stood in Shadowhall within the thing called Morgenguard. He was the Angel of Death, Emeritus, and when the old familiar voice crackled over the loudspeaker and said, “Report!” he did not say, “Done.” He said, “Extremely confidential,” for he knew what that meant.

There came a flash of lightning, and he stood in a larger hall before a ten-story console, and he advanced toward it and heard the order repeated once more.

“One question, Morgenguard,” he said, as he halted and folded his arms upon his breast. “Is it true that you were fifteen years in the building?”

“Fifteen years, three months, two weeks, four days, eight hours, fourteen minutes and eleven seconds,” Morgenguard replied.

Then Stain unclasped his arms, and his hands came together upon his breast.

Morgenguard may have realized in that instant what he was doing; but then, an Angel’s body has built into it an arsenal of weapons and numerous protective devices and his reflexes have been surgically and chemically stimulated to a point of thoughtlike rapidity; also, Stain had been recalled from retirement because he was one of the ten fastest who had ever served Morgenguard.

The effect was instantaneous. The clap of thunder was not Morgenguard’s doing, for he did not remove Stain in time.

The Dark Angel might never strike itself. The seven who had approached the lady Galatea had suffered from a recoil-effect from her own defense system. Never before had the power of the Dark Angel been turned upon himself, and never in the person of one. Stain had worked it out, though.

Death and destruction meeting automatic defense meeting recoil meeting defense recoil defense recoil breakthrough, and a tremendous fireball blooming like an incandescent rose rose within the heart of the city-sized machine Morgenguard.

Right or wrong. Simule will have some years to grow, he knew, in that instant, and—