"Harlan Ellison - Troublemakers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

The mist swirled up around us, as chill and final as the dust of pharaohsтАЩ tombs.

We moved through it, toward the pulsing heart of blue light. And as we came into the penultimate circle,
we stopped. We were in the outer ring of potency, and we saw the claiming things that had come for
Lizette. She lay out on an altar of crystal, naked and trembling. They stood around her, enormously tall
and transparent. Man shapes without faces. Within their transparent forms a strange, silvery fog swirled,
like smoke from holy censers. Where eyes should have been on a man or a ghost, there were only dull
flickering firefly glowings, inside, hanging in the smoke, moving, changing shape and position. No eyes at
all. And tall, very tall, towering over Lizette and the altar.

For me, overcommitted to love, when dawn came without salvation, there was only an eternity of
wandering, with my unicorn as sole companion. Ghost forevermore. Incense chimera viewed as
dust-devil on the horizon, chilling as I passed in city streets, forever gone, invisible, lost, empty, helpless,
wandering.
But for her, empty vessel, the fate was something else entirely. The God of Love had allowed her the
time of wandering, trapped by day in stones, freed at night to wander. He had allowed her the final
chance. And having failed to take it, her fate was with these claiming creatures, gods themselves . . . of
another order . . . higher or lower I had no idea. But terrible.

тАЬLagniappe!тАЭ I screamed the word. The old Creole word they use in New Orleans when they want a
little extra; a bonus ofcroissants , a few additional carrots dumped into the shopping bag, a bakerтАЩs
dozen, a larger portion of clams or crabs or shrimp. тАЬLagniappe!Lizette, take a little more! Try for the
extra! Try . . . demand it . . . thereтАЩs time . . . you have it coming to you . . . youтАЩve paid . . . IтАЩve paid . .
. itтАЩs ours . . .try! тАЭ

She sat up, her naked body lit by lambent fires of chill blue cold from the other side. She sat up and
looked across the inner circle to me, and I stood there with my arms out, trying desperately to break
through the outer circle to her. But it was solid and I could not pass. Only virgins could pass.

And they would not let her go. They had been promised a feed, and they were there to claim. I began to
cry, as I had cried when I finally heard what the mother had said, when I finally came home to the empty
apartment and knew I had spent my life loving too much, demanding too much, myself a feeder at a
board thatcould be depleted and emptied and serve up no more. She wanted to come to me, I couldsee
she wanted to come to me. But they would have their meal.

Then I felt the muzzle of my unicorn at my neck, and in a step he had moved through the barrier that was
impenetrable to me, and he moved across the circle and stood waiting. Lizette leaped from the altar and
ran to me.

It all happened at the same time. I felt LizetteтАЩs body anchor in to mine, andwe saw my unicorn standing
over there on the other side, and for a momentwe could not summon up the necessary reactions, the
correct sounds.We knew for the first time in either our lives or our deaths what it was to be paralyzed.
Then reactions began washing over me,we , us in wave after wave: cascading joy that Lizette had come
to . . . us; utter love for this Paul ghost creature; realization that instinctively part of us was falling into the
same pattern again; fear that that part would love too much at this mystic juncture; resolve to temper our
love; and then anguish at the sight of our unicorn standing there, waiting to be claimed . . .

Wecalled to him . . . using his secret name, onewe had never spoken aloud.We could barely speak.
Weight pulled at his throat, our throats. тАЬOld friend . . .тАЭ We took a step toward him but could not pass