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

their minds would malfunction in similar ways. Were they mere mirror constructs, he would have known by
now.
"It's not," she went on, "that I worry that the end is near. I suppose the end is always near. Relative to
Eternity. And it's not that I'm terribly curious how it will end. I suppose we'll hurtle over the edge of some
immense waterfall, like Columbus and his crew."
"Listen!" he said, breaking in. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"The music. It's the score for Koyaanisqatsi. God, I used to watch the tape of that over and over."
She gave a sigh of polite disapproval. "I can't bear Philip Glass. It's just as you say, the same thing over
and over."
"There was this one incredible pan. It must have been taken by a helicopter flying above this endless
high-rise apartment complex. But it had been abandoned."
"And?" she insisted. "What is your point?"
"Well, it was no simulation. The movie was made before computers could turn any single image into
some endless quilt. We were really see-ing this vast deserted housing project, high-rise after high-rise with
the windows boarded up. The abandoned ruins of some ultra-modern city.
it existed, but until that movie nobody knew about it. It makes you think."
"It doesn't make me think."
There was no way, at this moment, they were going to have sex. Anyhow, it probably wouldn't
have been safe. The boat would capsize and they would drown.


A sunless sea
It was as though the whole beach received its light from a few candles. A dim, dim light evenly
diffused, and a breeze wafting up from the water with an unrelenting coolness, as at some theater where
the air-conditioning cannot be turned off. They huddled within the cocoon of a single beach towel, thighs
pressed together, arms crisscrossed behind their backs in a chaste hug, trying to keep warm. The chill in
the air was the first less than agreeable physical sensation he'd known in Xanadu, but it did not
impart that zip of challenge that comes with October weather. Rather, it suggested his own
mortal diminishment. A plug had been pulled somewhere, and all forms of radiant energy were dwindling
synchronously, light, warmth, intelligence, desire.
There were tears on Debora's cheek, and little sculptures of sea foam in the shingle about them. And
very faint, the scent of nutmeg, the last lingering trace of some long-ago lotion or deodorant. The ocean
gray as aluminum.


the wailing
Here were the high-rises from the movie, but in twilight now, and without musical accompaniment,
though no less portentous for that. He glided past empty benches and leaf-strewn flower beds like a
cameraman on roller skates, until he entered one of the buildings, passing immaterially through its
plate-glass door. Then there was, in a slower pan than the helicopter's but rhyming to it, a smooth
iambic progression past the doors along the first-floor corridor.
He came to a stop before the tenth door, which stood ajar. Within he could hear a stifled
sobbingтАФa wailing, rather. He knew he was expected to go inside, to discover the source of this
sorrow. But he could not summon the will to do so. Wasn't his own sorrow sufficient? Wasn't the loss
of a world enough?
A man appeared at the end of the corridor in the brown uniform of United Parcel Service. His
footsteps were inaudible as he approached.
"I have a delivery for Cook, Fran," the UPS man announced, hold-
ing out a white envelope.