"Harlan Ellison - Alone Against Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

But one day AM woke up and knew who he was, and he linked himself, and he began feeding all the killing
data, until everyone was dead, except for the five of us, and AM brought us down here.тАЭ
Benny was smiling sadly. He was also drooling again. Ellen wiped the spittle from the corner of
his mouth with the hem of her skirt. Gorrister always tried to tell it a little more succinctly each time, but
beyond the bare facts there was nothing to say. None of us knew why AM had saved five people, or why
our specific five, or why he spent all his time tormenting us, nor even why he had made us virtually
immortal...
In the darkness, one of the computer banks began humming. The tone was picked up half a mile
away down the cavern by another bank. Then one by one, each of the elements began to tune itself, and
there was a faint chittering as thought raced through the machine.
The sound grew, and the lights ran across the faces of the consoles like heat lightning. The sound
spiraled up till it sounded like a million metallic insects, angry, menacing.
тАЬWhat is it?тАЭ Ellen cried. There was terror in her voice. She hadnтАЩt become accustomed to it, even
now.
тАЬItтАЩs going to be bad this time,тАЭ Nimdok said.
тАЬHeтАЩs going to speak,тАЭ Gorrister ventured.
тАЬLetтАЩs get the hell out of here!тАЭ I said suddenly, getting to my feet.
тАЬNo, Ted, sit down...what if heтАЩs got pits out there, or something else, we canтАЩt see, itтАЩs too dark.тАЭ
Gorrister said it with resignation.
Then we heard...I donтАЩt know...
Something moving toward us in the darkness. Huge, shambling, hairy, moist, it came toward us.
We couldnтАЩt even see it, but there was the ponderous impression of bulk, heaving itself toward us. Great
weight was coming at us, out of the darkness, and it was more a sense of pressure, of air forcing itself into
a limited space, expanding the invisible walls of a sphere. Benny began to whimper. NimdokтАЩs lower lip
trembled and he bit it hard, trying to stop it. Ellen slid across the metal floor to Gorrister and huddled into
him. There was the smell of matted, wet fur in the cavern. There was the smell of charred wood. There was
the smell of dusty velvet. There was the smell of rotting orchids. There was the smell of sour milk. There
was the smell of sulphur, of rancid butter, of oil slick, of grease, of chalk dust, of human scalps.
AM was keying us. He was tickling us. There was the smell of-
I heard myself shriek, and the hinges of my jaws ached. I scuttled across the floor, across the cold
metal with its endless lines of rivets, on my hands and knees, the smell gagging me, filling my head with a
thunderous pain that sent me away in horror. I fled like a cockroach, across the floor and out into the
darkness, that something moving inexorably after me. The others were still back there, gathered around the
firelight, laughing...their hysterical choir of insane giggles rising up into the darkness like thick, many-
colored wood smoke. I went away, quickly, and hid.
How many hours it may have been, how many days or even years, they never told me. Ellen
chided me for тАЬsulkingтАЭ and Nimdok tried to persuade me it had only been a nervous reflex on their part-
the laughing.
But I knew it wasnтАЩt the relief a soldier feels when the bullet hits the man next to him. I knew it
wasnтАЩt a reflex. They hated me. They were surely against me, and AM could even sense this hatred, and
made it worse for me because of the depth of their hatred. We had been kept alive, rejuvenated, made to
remain constantly at the age we had been when AM had brought us below, and they hated me because I
was the youngest, and the one AM had affected least of all.
I knew. God, how I knew. The bastards, and that dirty bitch
Ellen. Benny had been a brilliant theorist, a college professor; now he was little more than a semi-
human, semi-simian. He had been handsome, the machine had ruined that. He had been lucid, the machine
had driven him mad. He had been gay, and the machine had given him an organ fit for a horse. AM had
done a job on Benny. Gorrister had been a worrier. He was a connie, a conscientious objector; he was a
peace marcher; he was a planner, a doer, a looker-ahead. AM had turned him into a shoulder-shrugger, had
made him a little dead in his concern. AM had robbed him. Nimdok went off in the darkness by himself for