"Eric Brown - The Phoenix Experiment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

"I arrived here yesterday, from London." He stopped. "But aren't you-?" He
gestured to the greensward.
"I'm a patient, but not of the Canterbury Line. We do not mix."
He saw that although she had followed him with her head, her stance in the
wet sand had not altered. She stood with a torque to her spine that was at
once awkward and becoming, her hands still pocketed behind her.
He gestured to the steps in the cliff-face, suggesting she might care to
accompany him. "Why don't you mix?" he asked.
She walked with movements of such brittle care she might at one have time
broken every bone in her body, yet she was far from clumsy. She moved with
the fluid grace, the deliberation of an actress in a noh play.
She said simply in reply: "I scare them." And smiled at him.
At the top of the cliff he made an excuse and returned to his chalet.
There, he turned and watched her as she moved off with laborious languor.
Her perfection, despite whatever injuries she had sustained, filled him
with wonder - and he suspected that it was her perfection that scared the
other patients.

Two nights later he came close.
It was a contradiction that although for thirty years he had absented
himself from emotional involvement, so that he might hold himself at some
remove from the inevitability of death, now he was contemplating taking
his life. A fear of death had made him what he was - and it was as if
threatening himself with oblivion he was in fact presenting himself with
an ultimatum: either change, and learn to live and give as others do, or
kill yourself now in the full knowledge of the futility of your
existence... So naturally he had flung aside the pistol with which, with
ultimate irony, he had intended to shoot himself through the heart.
Then, in lieu of fulfilling the directive of his ultimatum, he found the
bottle of scotch and drank himself senseless.

Often, during the next few weeks, the patients invited him to join them,
and Fuller could not bring himself to refuse. He attended picnics on the
greensward, barbecues on the beach, late night parties at which the
invalids would sit outside in groups and point to the stars where they had
served.
His main concern in capitulating and joining their company, that he might
have to explain himself and his presence here, proved unfounded. They had
heard of Jonathon Fuller, the historical-scripter, and knew of the loss of
his daughter. He found himself accepted without having to explain his
past, and part of him - the part that had refused to end his life the
other night - knew full well that he was cheating himself.
He soon spent almost every night at their gatherings, and it was ironical
that they regarded him - the only fit and whole person among them - with
the pity that they themselves deserved; they had come to accept their own
injuries, but they found it hard to come to terms with Fuller's loss. They
had passed so close to death that the mere thought of it terrified them.
They were daunting company, these survivors of starship burnouts, novae,
alien pestilence, war and a hundred other far disasters. They spoke of
their experiences with a gentle wisdom at odds with the enormity of their