"Gardner Dozois & George R R Martin, Daniel Abraham - Shadow Twin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

cheap synthetic Muscat or Sweet Mary and woke up blind. Had he done that? Had he lost that much
control of himself? A tiny rivulet of fear traced a cold channel down along his spine. But his head didn't
hurt, and his belly didn't burn. He closed his eyes, blinking them hard several times, irrationally hoping
to jar his vision back into existence; the only result was an explosion of bright pastel blobs across his
retinas, scurrying colors that were somehow more disturbing than the darkness.

His initial sense of drowsy lethargy slid completely away from him, and he tried to call out. He felt his
mouth moving slowly, but he heard nothing. Was he deaf too? He tried to roll over and sit up but could
not. He lay back against nothing, floating again, not fighting, but his mind racing. He was fully awake
now, but he still couldn't remember where he was or how he had gotten there. Perhaps he was in danger:
his immobility was both suggestive and ominous. Had he been in a mine cave-in? Perhaps a rockfall had
pinned him down. He tried to concentrate on the feel of his body, sharpening his sensitivity to it, and
finally decided that he could feel no weight or pressure, nothing actually pinioning him. You might not
feel anything if your spinal cord had been cut, he thought with a flash of cold horror. But a moment's
further consideration convinced him that it could not be so: he could move his body a little, although
when he tried to sit up, something stopped him, pulled his spine straight, pulled his arms and shoulders
back down from where he'd raised them. It was like moving through syrup, only the syrup pushed back,
holding him gently, firmly, implacably in place.

He could feel no moisture against his skin, no air, no breeze, no heat or cold. Nor did he seem to be
resting on anything solid. Apparently, his first impression had been correct. He was floating, trapped in
darkness, held in place. He imagined himself like an insect in amber, caught fast in the gooey syrup that
surrounded him, in which he seemed to be totally submerged. But how was he breathing?

He wasn't, he realized. He wasn't breathing.

Panic shattered him like glass. All vestiges of thought blinked out, and he fought like an animal for his
life. He clawed the enfolding nothingness, trying to pull his way up toward some imagined air. He tried
to scream. Time stopped meaning anything, the struggle consuming him entirely, so that he couldn't say
how long it was before he fell back, exhausted. The syrup around him gently, firmly, pulled him back
precisely as he had beenтАФback into place. He felt as if he should have been panting, expected to hear
his blood pounding in his ears, feel his heart hammering at his chestтАФbut there was nothing. No breath,
and no heartbeat. No burning for air.

He was dead.

He was dead and floating on a vast dry sea that stretched away to eternity in all directions. Even blind
and deaf, he could sense the immensity of it, of that measureless midnight ocean.



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 Shadow Twin

He was dead and in Limbo, waiting in darkness for the Day of Judgment.

He almost laughed at the thoughtтАФit was better than what the Catholic priest in the tiny adobe church in
his little village in the mountains of northern Mexico had promised him; Father Ortega had often assured
him that he'd go right to the flames and torments of Hell as soon as he died unshrivenтАФbut he could not
push it away. He had died, and this emptinessтАФinfinite darkness, infinite stillness, trapped alone with