"Blish, James - A Work of Art" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

A Work of Art
INSTANTLY, he remembered dying. He remembered it, how-
ever, as if at two removesas though he were remembering
a memory, rather than an actual event; as though he him-
self had not really been there when he died.
Yet the memory was all from his own point of view, not
that of some detached and disembodied observer which
might have been his soul. He had been most conscious of
the rasping, unevenly drawn movements of the air in his
chest. Blurring rapidly, the doctor's face had bent over him,
loomed, come closer, and then had vanished as the doctor's
head passed below his cone of vision, turned sideways to
listen to his lungs.
It had become rapidly darker, and then, only then, had he
realized that these were to be his last minutes. He had tried
dutifully to say Pauline's name, but his memory contained
no record of the soundonly of the rattling breath, and of
the film of sootiness thickening in the air, blotting out every-
thing for an instant.
Only an instant, and then the memory was over. The room
was bright again, and the ceiling, he noticed with wonder,
had turned a soft green. The doctor's head lifted again and
looked down at him.
It was a different doctor. This one was a far younger man,
with an ascetic face and gloaming, almost fey eyes. There
was no doubt about it. One of the last conscious thoughts
he had had was that of gratitude that the attending physician,
there at the end, had not been the one who secretly hated
him for his one-time associations with the Nazi hierarchy.
The attending doctor, instead, had worn an expression amus-
ingly proper for that of a Swiss expert called to the deathbed
of an eminent man: a mixture of worry at the prospect of
losing so eminent a patient, and complacency at the thought
that, at the old man's age, nobody could blame this doctor if
he died. At 85, pneumonia is a serious matter, with or
without penicillin.
"You're all right now," the new doctor said, freeing his
patient's head of a whole series of little silver rods which
had been clinging to it by a sort of network cap. "Rest a
minute and try to be calm. Do you know your name?"
He drew a cautious breath. There seemed to be nothing
at all the matter with his lungs now; indeed, he felt positively
healthy. "Certainly," he said, a little nettled. "Do you know
yours?"
The doctor smiled crookedly. "You're in character, it ap-
pears," he said. "My name is Barkun Kris; I am a mind
sculptor. Yours?"
"Richard Strauss."
"Very good," Dr. Kris said, and turned away. Strauss,