"David Zindell - Shanidar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)

deep winter furs and wobbling on his newly bought skates, he struck out into the streets to preach
to the people.

In the great square outside the Hofgarten where the people of the Unreal City, high and low, meet
and take their refreshment, the scryers, eschatologists, and cantors as well as the harijan,
splicers and whores, he said, 'I s-speak to that inside you which is less than m-man but also m-
more.' And he raged because no one would listen to a short, overdressed farsider who stuttered and
could barely stand on his skates. 'You p-pilots,' he said, 'you are the p-pride of the galaxy! You
travel from Simoom to Urradeth and on to Jacaranda in less time than the Darghinni need to prepare
the first of eighteen Jumps from Summerworld to Darkmoon. You penetrate the Vild, lost in your
mathematics and dreamtime and tell yourself you have seen something of the ineffable and eternal.
But you have forgotten how to take pleasure in a simple flower! You foreswear marriage and
children and thus you are more and less than men!'

"When the pilots turned away from him to drink their kvass and eiswein, he told the historians and
fabulists that they knew nothing of the true nature of man. And they, those haughty professionals
of our city, snubbed him and went on talking about Gaiea and Old Earth as if he were invisible. So
Goshevan spoke to the programmers and holists, the Fravashi aliens and Friends of God, the
harijan, the wormrunners, the splicers, and at last, because he was filled with a great sadness
and longing, he zipped up his furs and went deep into the Farsiders' Quarter where he might pay
for the company of a friendly ear.

"Because he was lonely and had been without a woman for many years, he took his pleasure among the
whores of the lesser glidderies, which at that time were stained crimson and were narrow and
twisted like snakes. Because his soul was empty he smoked toalache and awoke one fine morning to
find himself in bed with four courtesans from Jacaranda. They asked him if all dark little men
were as potent as he and advised him that the joys of conjoining with the alien Friends of Man
were such that no man who had known only women could comprehend them. Goshevan, horrified at what
he had done and forgetting where he was, began swearing and shouting and ordered that the
courtesans be sold as field slaves. He threw a bag of diamonds at them, clipped in the blades to
his skates, and raced up and down the back glissades for two days before he came to his right
mind."


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I paused here in my story to refill our cups. The young man was staring at me intently, watching
my every move with those piercing brown eyes and, I felt, stripping my words bare for lies. The
room was very quiet and cold; I could hear his slow, even breathing as he nodded his head and
asked, "And then?"

"And then Goshevan made a decision. You see, he had hoped to win people over to his dream, which
was to go out into the wasteland and live as what he called 'natural man.' The Alaloi, of course,
had been his model. When he found he could not emulate them, he decided to join them."

"A noble vision," the young man said.

"It was insane!" I half-shouted "Who were these Alaloi he so admired? Dreamers and madmen they