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

Ilene sipped her cocktail, watching the grey chaos of clouds flow like a tide around them. In the
dimly luminous light Scott's face seemed like dark stone, flecks of brightness showing in his
eyes. She touched his hand gently.
'You're a soldier, Brian. You wouldn't change.'
His laugh was intensely bitter. 'Like hell I wouldn't, Mistress Ilene Kane! Do you think
fighting's just pulling a trigger? I'm a military strategist. That took ten years. Harder cramming
than I'd have had in a Keep Tech-Institute. I have to know everything about war from trajectories
to mass psychology. This is the greatest science
the System has ever known, and the most useless. Because war will die in a few centuries at most.
Ilene - you've never seen a Free Company's fort. It's science, marvellous science, aimed at
military ends only. We have our psych-specialists. We have our engineers, who plan everything from
ordnance to the frictional quotient on flitterboats. We have the foundries and mills. Each
fortress is a city made for war, as the Keeps are made for social progress.'
'As complicated as that?'
'Beautifully complicated and beautifully useless. There are so many of us who realize that. Oh, we
fight - it's a poison. We worship the Company - that is an emotional poison. But we live only
during wartime. It's an incomplete life. Men in the Keeps have full lives; they have their work,
and their relaxations are geared to fit them. We don't fit.'
'Not all the undersea races,' Ilene said. 'There's always the fringe that doesn't fit. At least
you have a raison d'etre. You're a soldier. I can't make a lifework out of pleasure. But there's
nothing else for me.'
Scott's fingers tightened on hers. 'You're the product of a civilization, at least. I'm left out.'
'With you, Brian, it might be better. For a while. I don't think it would last for long.'
'It might.'
'You think so now. It's quite a horrible thing, feeling yourself a shadow.'
'I know.'
'I want you, Brian,' Ilene said, turning to face him. 'I want you to come to Montana Keep and stay
here. Until our experiment fails. I think it'll fail presently. But, perhaps, not for some time. I
need your strength. I can show you how to get the most out of this sort of life - how to enter
into it. True hedonism. You can give me- companionship perhaps. For me the companionship of
hedonists who know nothing else isn't enough.'
Scott was silent. Ilene watched him for a while.
'Is war so important?' she asked at last.
'No,' he said, 'it isn't at all. It's a balloon. And it's empty, I
know that. Honour of the regiment!' Scott laughed. 'I'm not hesitating, really. I've been shut out
for a long time. A social unit shouldn't be founded on an obviously doomed fallacy. Men and women
are important, nothing else, I suppose.'
'Men and women - or the race?'
'Not the race,' he said with abrupt violence. 'Damn the race! It's done nothing for me. I can fit
myself into a new life. Not necessarily hedonism. I'm an expert in several lines; I have to be. I
can find work in Montana Keep.'
'If you like. I've never tried. I'm more of a fatalist, I suppose. But . . . what about it,
Brian?'


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Her eyes were almost luminous, like shining emeralds, in the ghostly light.
'Yes,' Scott said. Til come back. To stay.'