"Charles L Grant - Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

"Who said that?"
"I don't know. Miller, maybe. I don't remember."
"You should."
"Why? Who cares besides you and me?"
"What about the guy who wrote it?"

I drifted back and forth from a sleep filled with candles and unicorns, and when I asked Helena about it, she told me the scene was from something about a hundred and seventy years old. She quoted me a long passage from the end of the play, about worlds lit by lightning and change and things like that. I'm no history buff, so I can't say how appropriate that might have been to the time it appeared, but I know about lightning now. And when I tried to explain it to her, all I could do was choke and tell her never mind.

* *
Finally, just before dawn took the black from the ocean outside the plex, I cupped and pillowed my hands behind my head and whistled softly a song I once knew. It would have been nice if it had been a lullaby my father used to sing. Would have been. But it wasn't.
"Helena, there's one thing I know, now."
"What? And don't you ever get tired?"
"No, not often. And what I know is: we're dying. You and me and Philip and the rest of the' whole stupid stable. Now that's a good word: stable. We're horses, Helena, in a motorcar world. One by one they're shooting us down. These tapes I'm making, they're supposed to be helping kids grow up. And what do I do? Me, the hero who survives floods and earthquakes and invasions of god-awful monsters? just like a kid I lash out and hit someone just because I don't get it. I almost killed those guys, Helena. And they'll come for me. Someday."
A rustling. The bedclothes. Helena had finally given up and slipped in between the sheets. "Then we'll have to escape. It's as simple as that."
"We?"
"Oh, come on, Gordy! Do you think I'm going to let you have all the fun?"
This time the laughter was real, delightfully so, and I stretched out, gathered her to me, and we rocked, like children, until the spasms had passed and we were sober again.
"Look," I said, "there's no sense in my making some big dramatic escape until, and unless, the Blues come for me. It'll be easy to hide in a plex this big, right? And I want to finish the contract so I can get a job somewhere else if I have to. I don't need that blot on my work record, not now. And I have to find something else out. Like you said, sort of: I want to rate a comet. Even a small one. And to do it, I'll have to learn everything I can about why we're... dying."
"I know the answer already."
"Sure."
"The public doesn't like us anymore. It took a few thousand years, but they've finally decided they don't want us to live."
"No," I said, hovering close to an answer, yet not: close enough to know 'what I was seeing. "No, there's something more. And before I start running, I want to know what."

"Then the first thing you're going to have to do is not to be so solemn. If we're going to hunt for this thing of yours, we'd better do it smiling."
.,Why?"

"Oh, go to sleep, Gordon. You're no fun anymore."

Two days later a pamph came, announcing the limited engagement of a series of original material to be performed by players from one of the lunar domes. I had seen them before. I needed to see them again, knowing without knowing that they held the key. Vivian got me the tickets, and I repaid her by showing that simp of a director just how good an actor I could be. He loved me. I loved me. And, thankfully, I still wasn't picked up by a WatchDog patrol. I still jumped ` at shadows, still looked over my shoulder, but I was beginning to believe that I would always remain free. Or so I tried telling myself each night before sleeping.
The second day after the lunar pamph came, I was stopped in the Keyloft lobby by my landlord, who told me there was a friend of mine waiting upstairs.
"He didn't have a latch, Mr. Anderson," he said, "but I seen him around here a lot of times so I figured you wouldn't mind that I tubed up and let him in."
I nodded thoughtfully, thanked him for his kindness, and spent most of the time in the liftube wondering if maybe it had been a Blue plant, and my dear old landlord would be collecting that reward.
But it wasn't.
It was Philip.
He was just signing off the vione when I came in, and as fast as I stepped around the couch to see who he was talking to, he shifted his bulk until the screen staticked into darkness.
"What?" I said, perching on the couch's arm.
Philip spread his arms in an attitude of peace-making. I didn't believe it for a minute. Without a single direct word, I had taken Helena from him, and had made him admit twice that he was living a deadly romantic lie. The friendship we had had was buried. Deep.
"Come on, Phil, I'm hungry, and then I have some studying to do for tomorrow." Half true. After eating, I was going to continue reading some of the scripts Helena had. let me borrow.
"All right, then," he said, still standing by the vione. "I've
come to inform you that I overheard something this morning that I believe you would be interested in. In return, I expect a favor."
"I don't get it," I said. "You want to make some kind of deal?"
He nodded.
"For what? A lousy favor? What do you need, money? A place to stay?"
"Just wait a moment, Gordon, and you'll find out everything. I am, as you well know, currently unemployed. According to procedure, just being part of Vivian's client menagerie marked me employed. When she unceremoniously, and without real cause, dumped me, I had to gain a measure of strength and make myself known to the nearest Blue Station Local to . . . to sign up for the complete dole." His hands fluttered, clasping at his stomach, grabbing at the baggy trousers he hadn't bothered to tuck into his boots. He was all in green today, his lucky color.
"I'm sorry, Phil."
His grin was short-lived and insincere. "I'm sure you are. But that's not the point, is it? While I was there I overheard a couple of the Locals-one was a Dog pilot, I think-talking about a series of criminal attacks down in the old district. Where you hang out, Gordon. I imagine you've heard about them."
I nodded, slowly, my face a masterpiece of serenity.
"Well, one of them was a regular patron of..." He rolled his eyes in an effort to display to me how distasteful his words were. To him. Not for me. "He enjoyed spending many off-duty hours in a joyhall." The words came in a rush, as if acidic on his tongue. "Arena stuff. You know what I mean. The sagas and things that you are always blathering about."
"Phil," I said, rising and heading for the ovenwall, "if you're going to be snide, just show yourself out, okay? I don't need that kind of aggravation today."
"I'm sorry," he said, standing behind me as I selected my last-meal, and pointedly made the selection for one. When I turned around, he shrugged. "The Local was saying that he was sure that one of the actors fit the description of the man-they think those things were done by one man, you see-of the man who did them. Of course, I couldn't hear what the man looked like."