"Henry Kuttner - Sword of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

SWORD OF TOMORROW
BY HENRY KUTTNER
A COMPLETE NOVEL OF THE FUTURE

Trance-borne to a far distant age, Pilot Ethan Court is plunged into peril
and adventure on a strange new world where his courage and idealism are put
to a stern test!

CHAPTER I
Jap Torture Cell

IT WAS always easier when he sank into the opium-drugged stupor from which not even torture
could rouse him. At first he clung to two memoriesтАФhis rank, and his Army serial number. By focusing
his pain-hazed mind on those realities he was able to keep sane.
After a while he didn't want to keep his sanity.
Men can survive a year, or two years, in a Japanese prison camp. They may emerge maimed,
spiritually sick, but alive. They remember their own names.
He used to say it aloud at first, in the musty darkness of the cell.
"Ethan Court," he whispered to the black, hidden walls. "Ethan Court." And thenтАФ"Times Square.
Tiffany's, Bretano's, Staten Island. The Yankee Stadium, pop corn, whisky sours, Greenwich Village'"
Presently he noticed that the sound of his voice was different, and after that he scarcely spoke. The
horrible lethargy of inaction closed around him. Occasionally, though less often now, he was taken before
Japanese officers who questioned him.
He was somewhere in Occupied China, he knew, but since his plane had been forced down, he had
been shunted for a long distance by a roundabout route. He guessed that this was a temporary
headquarters, probably on the site of some old Chinese town, and he suspected that it was in the hill
country. His savage captors told him nothing, of course. They just asked questions.
How much could he disclose in the way of military information, the Japanese did not know.
Hard-pressed, they were overlooking no bets. His stubbornness enraged them. The commander of the
post, a disappointed samurai of a politically-unpopular family, gradually came to believe that a feud
existed between Court and himself. It became a contest between the Japanese officer and the American,
entirely passive on one side, ruthlessly active on the other.
Time dragged on, while bombers roared in increasing numbers over Japan and the brown hordes
sullenly withdrew from Burma and Thailand and the islands north of Borneo. This headquarters was
isolated, but in a strategic spot. The commander saw the tides of war rage past him and recede. The
radio gave him no comfort. The Emperor of Japan was silent upon his throne.
A transfer required time. In enforced idleness, the Nipponese commander devoted himself to
breaking the will of the American. Torture failed, and so he tried an ancient Japanese trickтАФopium. It
was mixed in Court's food, and, after a while, the craving grew in him. The Jap officer kept his prisoner
saturated with the drug. Court's mind dulled.

A MONGOL, Kai-Sieng, was put in Court's cell. He was a prisoner, too, and spoke only a few
English words. There had been an uprising, Court gathered. The prison cells of the fort were overflowing.
For a month Kai-Sieng remained, and in that time Court learned of the deceptive Peace of the Poppy.
 Curious conversations they had there in the darkтАФscraps of English and Chinese and lingua franca.
The Mongol was a fatalist. Death was inevitable, and meanwhile he had killed very many Japanese. The
taunts and torments he had undergone had not moved him. He knew the hiding-place of his Chinese
guerrilla leader, but the Japs would not learn it from him.
"They cannot touch me," he told Court. "The part of me that isтАФmyselfтАФis sunk deep in a well of
peace."