"Henry Kuttner - Clash by Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

-Housman
There were nuances, Scott found, which he had never known existed. A hedonist hike Ilene devoted
her life to such nuances; they were her career. Such minor matters as making the powerful, insipid
Moonflower Cocktails more palatable by filtering them through lime-soaked sugar held between the
teeth. Scott was a uisqueplus man, having the average soldier's contempt for what he termed
hydroponic drinks, but the cocktails Ilene suggested were quite as effective as acrid, burning
amber uisqueplus. She taught him, that night, such tricks as pausing between glasses to sniff
lightly at happy-gas, to mingle sensual excitement with mental by trying the amusement rides
designed to give one the violent physical intoxication of breathless speed. Nuances all, which
only a girl with Ilene's background could know. She was not representative of Keep life. As she
had said, she was an offshoot, a casual and useless flower on the great vine that struck up


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inexorably to the skies, its strength in its tough, reaching tendrils - scientists and technicians
and sociopoliti-cians. She was doomed in her own way, as Scott was in his. The undersea folk
served Minerva; Scott served Mars; and Ilene served Aphrodite - not purely the sexual goddess, but
the patron of arts and pleasure. Between Scott and Ilene was the difference between Wagner and
Strauss; the difference between crashing chords and tinkling arpeggios. In both was a muted
bittersweet sadness, seldom realized by either. But that undertone was brought out by then-
contact. The sense of dim hopelessness in each responded to the other.
It was carnival, but neither Ilene nor Scott wore masks. Their faces were masks enough, and both
had been trained to reserve, though in different ways. Scott's hard mouth kept its tight grimness
even when he smiled. And Ilene's smiles came so often that they were meaningless.
Through her, Scott was able to understand more of the undersea life than he had ever done before.
She was for him a catalyst. A tacit understanding grew between them, not needing words. Both
realized that, in the course of progress, they would eventually die out. Mankind tolerated them
because that was necessary for a little time. Each responded differently. Scott served Mars; he
served actively; and the girl, who was passive, was attracted by the antithesis.
Scott's drunkenness struck psychically deep. He did not show it. His stiff silver-brown hair was
not disarranged, and his hard, burned face was impassive as ever. But when his brown eyes met
Ilene's green ones a spark of- something-met between them.
Colour and light and sound. They began to form a pattern now, were not quite meaningless to Scott.
They were, long past midnight, sitting in an Olympus, which was a private cosmos. The walls of the
room in which they were seemed nonexistent. The gusty tides of grey, faintly luminous clouds
seemed to drive chaotically past them, and, dimly, they could hear the muffled screaming of an
artificial wind. They had the isolation of the gods.
And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep- That was, of
course, the theory of the Olympus rooms. No one existed, no world existed, outside of the chamber;
values automatically shifted, and inhibitions seemed absurd.
Scott relaxed on a translucent cushion like a cloud. Beside him, Ilene lifted the bit of a happy-
gas tube to his nostrils. He shook his head.
'Not now, Ilene.'
She let the tube slide back into its reel. 'Nor I. Too much of anything is unsatisfactory, Brian.
There should always be something imtasted, some anticipation left- You have that. I haven't.'
'How?'
'Pleasures - well, there's a limit. There's a limit to human endurance. And eventually I build up
a resistance psychi-