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

perhaps a well-preserved fifty?) and now a touch of gray at my temples, artificial, added to the
uncertainty. Hair a sandy color, not unappealing, body neither fat nor scrawny, but comfortably lean.
Once I was considered tall, as the standards of men were measured, then av-erage in height as man's
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fortune increased, now tall again by comparison. But not excessively so.Average-ness was important, it
was my only armor against dis-covery, and so I was carefully, studiously,average. What nature had not
provided, cosmetics and tailoring did; my appearance should inspire no curiosity in ei-ther human or Tyr.

But when I looked at my reflection for more than a moment, when I allowed myself tosee . . . ah, then
the ghosts were visible. Visions arose from the past, images displaced from their natural timeframe,
wrapped around my current visage like a mask. What I had been. The things I had failed to do. What I
had chosen to accept. If it was true that the coward died a thousand deaths, then I died each time I
looked at my reflection. And so I chose the easiest course: to look quickly and then turn away, lest I
render myself inca-pable of maintaining that lie which was now a neces-sity of my life.

Mine was the last of the late-night classes, so I locked the building when I left. Coarse steel bars had
been placed on the windows, ironic in light of the fact that theft was almost nonexistent. What was the
point of accumulating wealth in a world that no longer had purpose? But what little thievery there was,
was fo-cused upon the few items of real valueтАФsuch as so-phisticated electronic equipment in working
orderтАФso I took the time to check the double doors when I was done, pulling hard at the two of them
until I was sure that the ancient locks had caught.

Don't dwell on the past,I cautioned myself, but the ghosts of memory were legion tonight. The spirit of
Earth had been destroyed, but what right did I have to complain? The current world was no threat to me
or my kind; how often had I dreamed of that coming to pass? What price would I not have paid, in my
youth, to purchase a lifetime of peace?

Not this,a voice whispered, couched in the cadence of recall.Never this . . .

Memories: I felt them rising within me, tried not to let them overwhelm me. Of all my unique weaknesses,
this was the worstтАФand the only one which I had not, to some degree, mastered. My brain seemed loath
to distinguish between sleeping and waking, and plagued my conscious hours with images that rightly
belonged in dreams. Pre-Conquest science had verified the problemтАФelectromagnetic patterns occurred
in my waking brain which should only appear during sleepтАФ but had offered no salvation; my own
experiments, so successful in every other regard, had failed to provide a solution. All I could do was
concentrate on the pres-ent, observe my surroundingsтАФ

And stop suddenly, alert. Something was wrong; I knew it, but couldn't say how. I listened: no sound
existed that was any more or less than ordinary. I looked, deep into the shadows of night, my vision
ad-equate even in the relative darkness: I saw no shapes or movement which any such night might not
contain. The air? I tested it: warm Georgian moisture, rich with the smells of autumn.

And then the breeze shifted direction and suddenly there was something elseтАФhorrible, stiflingтАФthat
awakened memories so intense that they struck like a fist straight into my gullet, driving the breath from
my body in a sudden eruption of fear.