"Anderson, Poul - Goat Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

I return with my songs to the lowlands. Word about me has gone widely. They are a large crowd who follow me down the highroad until it has changed into a street.
УThe Dark Queen will soon come to these parts,Ф they tell me. УAbide till She does. Let Her answer those questions you put to us, which make us sleep so badly.Ф
УLet me retire to prepare myself,Ф I say. I go up a long flight of steps. The people watch from below, dumb with awe, till I vanish. Such few as were in the building depart. I walk down vaulted halls, through hushed high-ceilinged rooms full of tables, among shelves made massive by books. Sunlight slants dusty through the windows.
The half memory has plagued me of late: once before, I know not when, this year of mine also took place. Perhaps in this library I can find the tale thatЧ casually, I suppose, in my abnormal childhoodЧI read. For nian is older than SUM: wiser, I swear; his myths hold more truth than Its mathematics. I spend three days and most of three nights in my search. There is scant sound but the rustling of heaves between my hands. Folk place offerings of food amid drink at the door. They tell themselves they do so out of pity, or curiosity, or to avoid the nuisance of having me die in an unconventional fashion. But I know better.
At the end of the three days I am little further along. I have too much material; I keep going off on sidetracks of beauty and fascination. (Which SUM means to eliminate.) My Education was like everyone elseТs, science, rationality, good sane adjustment. (SUM writes our curricula, amid the teaching machines have direct connections to It.) Well, I can make some of my lopsided training work for me. My reading has given me sufficient clues to prepare a search program. I sit down before an information retrieval console and run my fingers across its keys. They make a clattery music.
Electromi beams are swift hounds. Within secomids the screen lights up with words, and I read who I am.
It is fortunate that I am a fast reader. Before I can press the Clear button, the unreeling words are wiped out. For an instant the screen quivers with formlessness, themi appears


I HAD NOT CORRELATED THESE DATA WITH THE FACTS CONCERNING YOU. TI 115

INTRODUCES A NEW AND INDETERMINATE QIJANTITY INTO THE COMPUTATIONS.



The nirvamia which has come upon me (yes, I found that word among the old books, and how portentous it is) is miot passiveness, it is a tide more full and strong than that which bore mne down to the Dark Queen those ages apast in
wihdcountry. I say, as coolly as may be, УAn interesting coincidence. If it is a coincidence.Ф Surely sonic receptors are emplaced hereabouts.

EITHER THAT, OR A CERTAIN NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE OF THE

LOGIC OF EVENTS.

The vision dawning within me is so blinding bright that I cannot refrain from

answering, УOr a destiny, SUM?Ф

MEANINGLESS. MEANINGLESS. MEANINGLESS.


УNow why did You repeat Yourself in that way? Once would have sufficed. Thrice, though, makes an incantation. Are You by any chance hoping Your words will make me stop existing?Ф

I DO NOT IIOPE. YOU ARE AN EXPERIMENT. IF I COMPUTE A SIGNIFICANT

PROBABILITY OF YOUR CAUSING SERIOUS DISTURBANCE, I WILL HAVE YOU

TERMINATED.


I smile. УSUM,Ф I say, УI am going to terminate You.Ф I lean over and switch off the screen. I walk out into the evening.
Not everything is clear to me yet, that I must say and do. But enough is that I can start preaching at once to those who have been waiting for me. As I talk, others come down the street, and hear, and stay to listen. Soon they number in the hundreds.
I have no immense new truth to offer them: nothing that I have not said before, although piecemeal and unsystematically; nothing they have not felt themselves, in the innermost darkness of their beings. Today, however, knowing who I am and therefore why I am, I can put these things in words. Speaking quietly, now and then drawing on some forgotten song to show my meaning, I tell them how sick and starved their lives are; how they have made themselves slaves; how the enslavement is not even to a conscious mind, but to an insensate inanimate thing which their own ancestors began; how that thing is not the centrum of existence, but a few scraps of metal and bleats of energy, a few sad stupid patterns, adrift in unbounded space-time. Put not your faith in SUM, I tell them. SUM is doomed, even as you and I. Seek out mystery; what else is the whole cosmos but mystery? Live bravely, die and be done, and you will be more than any mnachnne. You may perhaps be God.
They grow tumultuous. They shout replies, some of which are animal howls. A few are for me, most are opposed. That doesnТt matter. I have reached into them, my music is being played on their nervestrings, and this is my entire purpose.
The sumi goes down behind the buildings. Dusk gathers. The city remains unilluniinated. I soon realize why. She is coming, the Dark Queen Whom they wanted me to debate with. From afar we hear Her chariot thunder. Folk wail in terror. They are not wont to do that either. They used to disguise their feelings from Her and themselves by receiving Her with grave sparse ceremony. Now they would flee if they dared. I have lifted the masks.
The chariot halts in the street. She dismounts, tall and shadowy cowled. The people make way before Her like water before a shark. She climbs the stairs to
face me. I see for the least instant that Her hips are not quite firm amid Her eyes abrim with tears. She whispers, too low for anyone else to hear, УOh, Harper, IТm sorry.Ф
УCome join me,Ф I invite. УHelp me set the world free.Ф
УNo. I cannot. I have been too hong with It.Ф She straightens. Imperium descends upon Her. Her voice rises for everyone to hear. The little television robots flit chose, bat shapes in the twilight, that the whole planet may witness my defeat. УWhat is this freedom you rant about?Ф She demands.
УTo feel,Ф I say. УTo venture. To wonder. To become men again.Ф
УTo become beasts, you mean. Would you demolish the machines that keep us alive?Ф
УYes. We must. Once they were good and useful, but we let them grow upon us like a cancer, and now nothing but destruction and a new beginning can save us.