"C. S. Friedman - The Madness Season" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

When the series of images ended I reached out and flicked the projector switch off, sending the last holo
spiraling down into darkness. That was when the years suddenly seemed to bleed one into another; past,
pres-ent, and future so lacking in definition that for a mo-ment I couldn't tell them apart. I couldn't
remember how many names I had worn, or where in my life each one belonged. It was the darkness that
triggered it, the absolute darkness of a moonless night, on a campus that had long since let its street lights
fall into disre-pair. Total blackness, within the classroom and with-out. And in that utter darkness,
silence. Not the relative quiet of a handful of students who had other things to do, other places to be
тАФthat would have been reassuringly familiar, a restless silence filled with guarded whispers, the rustling of
papers and tapes and clothing, and the barely audible shifting of flesh as one student stretched, another
yawned, a third dared to turn off his recorder. But instead, nothing. An abso-lute silence, the sound of a
dozen people who felt more comfortable with stillness than with life. An inhuman silence that had existed
on Earth for so long that I could no longer count its years, or separate them in my mind.

A touch to the control plate brought up the lights, an unhealthy green to illuminate empty, purposeless
faces. For a moment I was angry, and dared to hate the creatures that had brought us to this pass. But
an-ger of any kind is a dangerous emotion, it eats at the nerves and eventually makes you careless. And
carelessness was a luxury my kind couldn't afford. I took a deep breath to steady myself, and recited
once more the litany of my post-Conquest existence:You swore you would accept this. You have no
other choice.

"That's all for now," I announced. Bodies stirred, moving from lethargy to life without obvious
reluc-tance. Why did they come here? What did they want? A comfortable ritual, perhaps, or a taste of
the past. It didn't really matter. They came, and I taught them; the ritual exchange permitted us some
illusion of pur-pose, so I encouraged it. At heart it was just another lie, another emptiness . . . but we
must hold on to some illusions, and so they learnedтАФor played at learningтАФand the ancient ritual held
sway.Education. Without free thought, it had no meaning; without cre-ativity, it had no purpose. Why
did they bother? Why did I?

They filed out in silence, leaving me alone in the classroom, with only the projector for company. After a
moment I turned its motor off. The pockets were in need of repairтАФhad been, for some time nowтАФand
one of them jammed when I tried to open it to retrieve my holodisks. Just my luck. I pried back the lip to
get the disk out, careful not to do any permanent damage. There were fewer and fewer people to repair
such things, in the world that the Tyr had left us, and I hadn't worked in holography for ... well, for long
enough. I couldn't have repaired it.

At last I had them all, three matched disks in their labeled cases. ART OF THE SUBJUGATION,
PARTS I, II, AND III. Holding them brought to mind images from our most recent lesson: an
earthenware vase sup-ported by ten identical figures, a sculpture of steel and plastic which was tedious in
its symmetry, a computer generated light-sculpture too balanced to be dynamic. Disk after disk, holo
after holo, the message of the Tyr was driven home:In unity there is strength. Diversity breeds chaos.

We've learned our lesson well,I thought grimly.

My image, seen in the shimmer of a plastic window, against the backdrop of the Georgian night: A
middle-aged man, well-schooled, retiring, an instructor of night courses in post-Conquest art in one of
North-america's few remaining colleges. My age had always been difficult to judge (thirty-five? forty?