"Thomas M. Disch - In Xanadu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

state pleasure-dome 1
And thenтАФor, as it might be, once upon a timeтАФCancel produced a different result than it had on
countless earlier trials, and he found himself back in some kind of real world. There was theme music
("Wichita Lineman") and scudding clouds high overhead and the smell of leaf mold, as though he'd
been doing push-ups out behind the garage, with his nose grazing the dirt. He had his old body back,
 and it seemed reasonably trim. Better than he'd left it, certainly.
"Welcome," said his new neighbor, a blond woman in a blouse of blue polka dots on a silvery
rayonlike ground. "My name is Debora. You must be Fran Cook. We've been expecting you."
He suspected that Debora was a construct of some sort, and it occurred to him that he might be
another. But whatever she was, she seemed to expect a response from him beyond his stare of mild
surmise. "You'll have to fill me in a little more, Debora. I don't really know where we are."
"This is Xanadu," she said with a smile that literally flashed, like the light on top of a police car, with
distinct, pointed sparkles.
"But does Xanadu exist anywhere except in the poem?"
This yielded a blank look but then another dazzling smile. "You could ask the same of us."
"Okay. To be blunt: Am I dead? Are you?"
Her smile diminished, as though connected to a rheostat. "I think that might be the case, but I don't
know for sure. There's a sign at the entrance to the pleasure-dome that says 'Welcome to Eternity.'
But there's no one to ask, there or anywhere else. No one who knows anything. Different people have
different ideas. I don't have any recollection of dying, myself. Do you?"
"I have no recollections, period," he admitted. "Or none that occur to me at this moment. Maybe if I
tried to remember something in particular ..."
"It's the same with me. I can remember the plots of a few movies. And the odd quotation. 'We have
nothing to fear but fear itself.' "
"Eisenhower?" he hazarded.
"I guess. It's all pretty fuzzy. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention back then. Or it gets erased when
you come here. I think there's a myth to that effect. Or maybe it's so blurry because it never happened in
the first place. Which makes me wonder, are we really people here, or what? And where is here? This
isn't anyone's idea of heaven that I ever heard of. It's kind of like Disney World, only there's no food, no
rides, no movies. Nothing to do, really. You can meet people, talk to them, like with us, but that's about it.
Don't think I'm complaining. They don't call it a pleasure-dome for nothing. That part's okay, though it's not
any big deal. More like those Magic Finger beds in old motels."
He knew just what she meant, though he couldn't remember ever having been to an old motel or lain
down on a Magic Fingers bed. When he tried to reach for a memory of his earlier life, any detail he could
use as an ID tag, it was like drawing a blank to a clue in a crossword. Some very simple word that just
wouldn't come into focus.
Then there was a fade to black and a final, abject Dong! that didn't leave time for a single further
thought.

alph
"I'm sorry," Debora said, with a silvery shimmer of rayon, "that was my fault for having doubted.
Doubt's the last thing either of us needs right now. I love the little dimple in your chin."
"I'm not aware that I had a dimple in my chin."
"Well, you do now, and it's rightтАФ" She traced a line up the center of his chin with her finger, digging
into the flesh with the enamaled tip as it reached. "тАФhere."
"Was I conked out long?"
She flipped her hair as though to rid herself of a fly, and smiled in a forgiving way, and placed her hand
atop his. At that touch he felt a strange lassitude steal over him, a deep calm tinged somehow with mirth, as
though he'd remembered some sweet, dumb joke from his vanished childhood. Not the joke itself but the