"Damon Knight - Not with a Bang" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

He went on, "God didn't mean for the human race to end
like this. He spared us, you and me, to" he paused; how
could he say it without offending her? "parents" wouldn't do
too suggestive "to carry on the torch of life," he ended.
There. That was sticky enough.
Louise was staring vaguely over his shoulder. Her eyelids
biinked regularly, and her mouth made little rabbitlike mo-
tions in the same rhythm.
Smith looked down at his wasted thighs under the table-
top. I'm not strong enough to force her, he thought. Christ,
if I were strong enough!
He felt the futile rage again, and stifled it. He had to keep
his head, because this might be his last chance. Louise had
been talking lately, in the cloudy language she used about
everything, of going up in the mountains to pray for guid-
ance. She had not said "alone," but it was easy enough to
see that she pictured it that way. He had to argue her
around before her resolve stiffened. He concentrated furi-
ously and tried once more.
The pattern of words went by like a distant rumbling.
Louise heard a phrase here and there; each of them
fathered chains of thought, binding her reverie tighter. "Our
duty to humanity . . ." Mama had often saidthat wa in
the old house on Waterbury Street, of course, before Mama
had taken sickshe had said, "Child, your duty is to be
clean, polite, and God-fearing. Pretty doesn't matter.
There's plenty of plain women that have got themselves
good, Christian husbands."
Husbands . , . To have and to hold . . . Orange blos-
soms, and the bridesmaids; the organ music. Through the
haze, she saw Rolf's lean, wolfish face. Of course, he was
"T"
the only one she'd ever get; she knew that well enough.
Gracious, when a girl was past twenty-five, she had to take
what she could get.
But I sometimes wonder if he's really a nice man, she
thought.
". . . in the eyes of God . . ." She remembered the
stained-glass windows in the old First Episcopalian Church,
and how she always thought God was looking down at her
through that brilliant transparency. Perhaps He was still
looking at her, though it seemed sometimes that He had
forgotten. Well, of course she realized that marriage cus-
toms changed, and if you couldn't have a regular minis-
ter . . . But it was really a shame, an outrage almost, that
if she were actually going to marry this man, she couldn't
have all those nice things. . . . There wouldn't even be any
wedding presents. Not even that. But of course Rolf would
give her anything she wanted. She saw his face again, no-
ticed the narrow black eyes staring at her with ferocious