"R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 03 - Argo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

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VOLUME THREE:
ARGO

"Sine Patre, neque Finem,
Tu Melchisedech ordinum,
Panem proferens et Vinum."
[Bascom Bagby. Letters After I Am Dead.]



He, whoever he was, stirred out of a sick sleep into a frozen and
fitful fear of falling. He supposed that he was a man of the human sort, as
he usually was when he woke up in such a turmon. It seemed as if he had
always had these horrifying awakenings, and now as usual there was a
horrifying reason for it.
His stirring had caused him to sup another notch and to dislodge
something else of whatever was holding him up. And what had woke him up was
the sound of substance falling, through the frozen air, to a very great
distance down. He felt insecure, and he realized that most of what he had
been lying on had now vanished into space.
He was in a shallow notch of the very high reaches of an ice-coated
cliff. And that cliff was slick. There was an icy gale blowing, and ice was
falling in glops of many tons, falling and falling for a mile or more. He
seemed to be in a sleeping bag that threatened to spill him out upside down.
An ice support was eroding and breaking away under him, and the bottom of
the cliff was out of sight in the darkness. Whenever he shifted to get into
a more safe position, he dislodged more of his support.
"Kaloosh!" came the sound when the first and largest portion of the
dislodgcd snow-ice finally hit far below. He had changed position three
times while it fell. It was a thousand mcters or more straight down. His
head was out over the abyss and he gawked down into the white darkness.
White darkness? Yes, such frosty surroundings do provide a white
darkness at night.
"If I am a man, I can reason," he said, and his voice dislodged
still more of his support. His voice had been doing something else, and his
out-loud comment had provided a jarring conflict. Now he seeme to be tilting
downward on the disappearing icy ledge at an angle of more than sixty
degrees. "If I am a man, I can reason," he said soundlessly this time, being
careful to set up no disturbance with the vibration of his voice. "If I can
reason, I need not be afraid. If I am afraid of such a little thing as death
by falling, then it will not matter whether I fall. What falls will be
worthless. (Who is singing that damned song?) If I were afraid, it would not

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