"Harlan Ellison - Partners in Wonder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

TexasTower, ending with the paragraph whose last phrase is, тАЬit was a marvel.тАЭ I took over then, and wrote
to the time-break after Pareti and Peggy Flinn have had sex and Pareti goes to sleep. We alternated sections
from that point on.
But! Aha! You think it was that easy, that we just whipped on through, alternating sections? No.
After we had finished the first draft, at a total wordage that now escapes me, I went back and did a full
rewrite. And then Sheck went over my rewrite and did a final polish, so that the version you now have
before you is inextricably interwoven with both of us in each otherтАЩs sections. For instance, in the fourth
paragraph, the Eskimo-slit glasses are mine, but the Indians of Patzcuaro are his.
We wrote for forty-eight hours straight, napping fitfully while the other wrote. Ladies of my
acquaintance appeared from time to time and cooked us food and sulked at the growing rudeness of our
manner as our nerves frayed and the story grew. Finally, it was done. I did a retype of the manuscript,
adding a fillip here and an Ausable Chasm there.
 When it was done, we both collapsed and let someone else mail it out to Ed Ferman at the
Magazine of Fantasy &; Science Fiction, and we slept round-the-clock.
In collaborating, unless there is a specific reason for the styles to be identifiably different, I try to
adapt my writing to the manner of my co-author. In the case of Sheckley, it meant I had to start thinking
like a brain damage case. Consequently, I make no brief for the logic or sanity of this story. Further,
deponent saith not.


I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair Is Biting His Leg
Behind him lay the gray Azores, behind the Gates of Hercules; the sky above, the goo below.
тАЬScrewinтАЩ goo! ScrewinтАЩ goo!тАЭ Pareti yelled at the fading afternoon sunlight. It came up garbled,
around the stump of cigar, and it lacked the vigor Pareti usually brought to the curse, because it was nearly
shiftтАЩs end, and he was exhausted. The first time he had yelled it had been three years before, when he had
signed up to work in the goo fields as a harvester. He had yelled it when heтАЩd first seen the mucous gray
plankton mutation spotting this area of the Atlantic. Like leprosy on the cool blue body of the sea.
тАЬScrewinтАЩ goo,тАЭ he murmured. It was ritual now. It kept him company in the punt. Just him, alone
there: Joe Pareti and his dying voice. And the ghostly gray-white goo.
He caught the moving flash of grayout of the corner of his eye, light reflecting in the Eskimo-slit
glasses. He wheeled the punt around expertly. The goo was extruding again. A grayish-pale tentacle rose
above the oceanтАЩs surface; it looked like an elephantтАЩs trunk. Skimming smoothly toward it, Pareti
unconsciously gauged his distance: five feet from it, right arm tensed, out comes the net тАУ the strange net
on its pole, that resembled nothing so much as the butterfly nets used by the Indians of Patzcuaro тАУ and
with a side-arm softball pitch of a motion he scooped it up, writhing.
The goo wriggled and twisted, flailed at the meshes, sucked toothlessly up the aluminum handle.
Pareti estimated the chunk at five pounds, even as he brought it inboard and dumped it into the lazarette. It
was heavy for so small a fragment.
As the goo fell toward it, the lazarette dilated and compressed air shut the lid down with a sucking
sound on the tentacle. Then the iris closed over the lid.
The goo had touched him on the glove. Pareti decided it was too much trouble to disinfect
immediately. He swiped absently at his thinning sun-bleached hair, falling over his eyes, and wheeled the
punt around again.
He was about two miles from the TexasTower.
He was fifty miles out into the Atlantic.
He was off the coast of Hatteras, in Diamond Shoals.
He was at 35┬░ latitude, 75┬░ west longitude.
He was well into the goo fields.
He was exhausted. ShiftтАЩs end.
ScrewinтАЩ goo.