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

And we passed through the path of boiling steam.
And we passed through the country of the blind.
And we passed through the slough of despond.
And we passed through the vale of tears.
And we came, finally, to the ice caverns. Horizonless thousands of miles in which the ice had
formed in blue and silver flashes, where novas lived in the glass. The chill downdropping stalactites as
thick and glorious as diamonds that had been made to run like jelly and then solidified in graceful eternities
of smooth, sharp perfection.
We saw the stack of canned goods, and we tried to run to them. We fell in the snow, and we got up
and went on, and Benny shoved us away and went at them, and pawed them and gummed them and gnawed
at them and he could not open them. AM had not given us a tool to open the cans.
 Benny grabbed a three-quart can of guava shells, and began to batter it against the ice bank. The
ice flew and shattered, but the can was merely dented while we heard the laughter of a fat lady, high
overhead and echoing down and down and down the tundra. Benny went completely mad with rage. He
began throwing cans, as we all scrabbled about in the snow and ice trying to find a way to end the helpless
agony of frustration. There was no way.
Then BennyтАЩs mouth began to drool, and he flung himself on Gorrister...
In that instant, I went terribly calm.
Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death, I knew death
was our only way out. AM had kept us alive, but there was a way to defeat him. Not total defeat, but at
least peace. I would settle for that.
I had to do it quickly.
Benny was eating GorristerтАЩs face. Gorrister on his side, thrashing snow, Benny wrapped around
him with powerful monkey legs crushing GorristerтАЩs waist, his hands locked around GorristerтАЩs head like a
nutcracker, and his mouth ripping at the tender skin of GorristerтАЩs cheek. Gorrister screamed with such
jagged-edged violence that stalactites fell; they plunged down softly, erect in the receiving snowdrifts.
Spears, hundreds of them, everywhere, protruding from the snow. BennyтАЩs head pulled back sharply, as
something gave all at once, and a bleeding raw-white dripping of flesh hung from his teeth.
EllenтАЩs face, black against the white snow, dominos in chalk-dust. Nimdok with no expression but
eyes, all eyes. Gorrister half -conscious. Benny now an animal. I knew AM would let him play. Gorrister
would not die, but Benny would fill his stomach. I turned half to my right and drew a huge ice-spear from
the snow.
All in an instant:
I drove the great ice-point ahead of me like a battering ram, braced against my right thigh. It struck
Benny on the right side, just under the rib cage, and drove upward through his stomach and broke inside
him. He pitched forward and lay still. Gorrister lay on his back, I pulled another spear free and straddled
him, still moving, driving the spear straight down through his throat. His eyes closed as the cold penetrated.
Ellen must have realized what I had decided, even as the fear gripped her. She ran at Nimdok with a short
icicle, as he screamed, and into his mouth, and the force of her rush did the job. His head jerked sharply as
if it had been nailed to the snow crust behind him.
All in an instant.
There was an eternity beat of soundless anticipation. I could hear AM draw in his breath. His toys
had been taken from him. Three of them were dead, could not be revived. He could keep us alive, by his
strength and his talent, but he was not God. He could not bring them back.
Ellen looked at me, her ebony features stark against the snow that surrounded us. There was fear
and pleading in her manner, the way she held herself ready. I knew we had only a heartbeat before AM
would stop us.
It struck her and she folded toward me, bleeding from the mouth. I could not read meaning into
her expression, the pain had been too great, had contorted her face; but it might have been thank you. ItтАЩs
possible. Please.