"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

unsociable, for he found it a nuisance to come back to the common state to
engage in conversation, and in his special state the voices were too
slow-pitched to intrude on his consciousness.
Except that of the man whose face he had never seen.
"You are making very tardy progress," said the man. Once more they
were in a dark club. "Those who do not show more progress we cannot use.
After all, you are only a vestigial. It is probable that you have very
little of the ancient race in you. Fortunately those who do not progress
destroy themselves. You had not imagined that there were only two phases of
time, had you?"
"Lately I have come to suspect that there are many more," said
Charles Vincent.
"And you understand that one step only cannot succeed?"
"I understand that the life that I have been living is in direct
violation of all that we know of the laws of mass, momentum and
acceleration, as well as those of conservation of energy, the potential of
the human person, the moral compensation, the golden mean, and the capacity
of human organs. I know that I cannot multiply energy and experience sixty
times without increase of food intake, and yet I do it. I know that I cannot
live on eight minutes of sleep in twenty-four hours, but I do that also. I
know that I cannot reasonably crowd four thousand years of experience into
one life time, yet unreasonably I do not see what will prevent it. But you
say that I will destroy myself?"
"Those who take only the first step will destroy themselves."
"And how does one take the second step?"
"At the proper moment you will be given the choice."
"I have the most uncanny feeling that I will refuse the choice."
"Yes from present indications you will refuse it. You are
fastidious."
"You have a smell about you, Old Man Without a Face. I know now what
it is. It is the smell of the Pit."
"Are you so slow to learn that? But that is its name."
"It is the mud from the Pit, the same from which the clay tablets
were found, from the old land between the rivers. I've dreamed of the
six-fingered hand reaching up from that Pit and overshadowing us all. From
that slime!"
"Do not forget that according to another recension Another made the
People from that same slime."
"And I have read, Old Man: 'The People first counted by Fives and
Tens from the number of fingers on their hands. Put before the People the
--, for the reason that they had --, counted by Sixes and Twelve, But time
has left blanks on those tablets."
"Yes. Time, in one of its manifestations, has deftly and with a
purpose left those blanks."
"I cannot discover the name of the thing that goes into one of those
blanks. Can you?"
"I am part of the name that goes into one of those blanks."
"And you are the Man without a Face. But why is it that you
overshadow and control people? And to what purpose?"
"It will be long before you know those answers."