"Farmer,.Philip.Jose.-.Riverworld.1.-.To.Your.Scattered.Bodies.Go.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in
his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone.

It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was
alone in a world of soundlessness.

A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet
he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things
above, beside, below him? Where was he? He tried to sit up and
felt, numbly, a panic. There was nothing to sit up upon because he
was hanging in nothingness. The attempt sent him forward and
over, very slowly, as if he were in a bath of thin treacle. A foot from
his fingertips was a rod of bright red metal. The rod came from
above, from infinity, - and went on down to infinity. He tried to grasp
it because it was the nearest solid object, but something invisible
was resisting him. It was as if lines of some force were pushing
against him, repelling him.

Slowly, he turned over in a somersault. Then the resistance halted
him with his fingertips about six inches from the rod. He
straightened his body out and moved forward a fraction of an inch.
At the same time, his body began to rotate on its longitudinal axis.
He sucked in sir with aloud sawing noise. Though he knew no hold
existed for him, he could not help flailing his arms in panic to try to
seize onto something.

He was face 'down', (or was it up?) Whatever the direction, it was
opposite to that toward which he had been looking when he had
awakened. Not that this mattered. `Above' him and `below' him the
view was the same. He was suspended in space, kept from falling
by an invisible and unfelt cocoon. Six feet `below' him was the
body of a woman with a very pale skin. She was naked and
completely hairless. She seemed to be asleep: Her eyes were
closed, and her breasts rose and fell gently. Her legs were
together and straight out and her arms were by her side. She
turned slowly like a chicken on a spit.

The same force that was rotating her was also rotating him. He
spun slowly away from her, saw other naked and hairless bodies,
men, women, and children, opposite him in silent spinning rows.
Above him was the rotating naked and hairless body of a Negro.

He lowered his head so that he could see along his own body. He
was naked and hairless, too. His skin was smooth, and the
muscles of his belly were ridged, and his thighs were packed with
strong young muscles. The veins that had stood out like blue mole-
ridges were gone. He no longer had the body of the enfeebled and
sick sixty-nine-year-old man who had been dying ply a moment
ago. And the hundred or so scars were gone.