"Stephen Golden - Last Ghost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

almost-ghost. The unthoughts of the elder spirit were tangled more
than usual, owing to the presence of another after such a lonely period
of timelessness. But it was not a bad tangle; in fact, it was rather nice
to share the universe with someone else again. She was a pleasant aura
beside him in an otherwise insensate world.

They had both existed for over five thousand years. He was
undoubtedly the older of the pair; but the real difference between them
was that, while he had existed alone for so long that solitude had
nibbled away at his Swiss cheese mind, she had lived those centuries
with other people, other minds-a situation that either cracks one
completely or produces near-total stability. The latter was the case
with her, and so eventually her initial panic subsided and the clinical
attitude she had held for thousands of years returned.

"Well, it appears I'm going to be here for a while, so I might as well get
acquainted with this place. And since you're the only
thing around, I'll start with you. Who are you?"

"Dead."

"Obviously." Her non-voice managed to handle even sarcasm nicely.
"But don't you have some kind of a name?"

"No."

"Just for a moment she lost her patience. "That's impossible, Gabbv.
You must have had a name sometime. What was it?"

"I don't . . . I don't . . . I don't . . ." His broken-record attempt to
answer
was so pathetic that it touched the maternal instincts that she had
thought long-dead within her.

"I'm sorry," she said a bit more tenderly. "Let's talk about something
else. Where are we?"

"We are . . ."

"Dead," she finished with him. Oh Lord, help me have patience with him.
He's worse than a child. "Yes, I know that. But I mean our physical
location. Does it have a name?" ,

"No."

Stymied again. Her companion was obviously not inclined to
conversation, but her analytical mind felt an urgent need to talk, to try to
hold on to her sanity under such adverse conditions. "`All right, then, if
you don't want to talk, do you mind if I do?"