"Fritz Leiber - Damnation Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

But remember that I knew I had killed a real person.

That wasnтАЩt anything allegorical.

Now for a little more detail on this тАЬLook, Buster,тАЭ woman. To begin with, she didnтАЩt resemble any part
of the DTs or its outlying kingdoms, though an amateur aright тАШhave thought differentlyтАФespecially if he
had given too much weight to the sigil on her forehead. But I was no amateur.

She seemed about my ageтАФforty-fiveтАФbut I couldnтАЩt

be sure. Her body looked younger than that, her face

older; both were trim and had seen a lot of use, I got

the impression. She was wearing black sandals and a

black unbelted tunic with just a hint of the sack dress

to it, yet she seemed dressed for the street. It occurred

тАЬto me even then (off-track ideas can come to you very swiftly and sharply in the DT outskirts) that it
was a costume that, except perhaps for the colour, would have fitted into any number of historical eras:
oldEgypt,Greece, maybe the Directoire.World War I,Burma,Yucatan, to name some. (Should I ask her
if she spoke Mayathan? I didnтАЩt, but I donтАЩt think the question would have fazed her; she seemed
altogether sophisticated, a real cosmopoliteтАФshe pronounced тАЬBusterтАЭ as if it were part of a curious,
somewhat ridiculous jargon she was using for shock purposes.)

From her left arm hung a black handbag that closed with a drawstring and from which protruded the tip
of silvery object about which I found myself apprehensively . curious.

Her right arm was raised and bent, the elbow touching the door frame, the hand brushing back the very
dark bangs from her forehead to show me the sigil, as if that had a bearing on her question.

The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark lines and about as big as a silver dollar. An X
superimposed on a plus sign. It looked permanent.

Except for the bangs she wore her hair pinned up. Her ears were flat, thin-edged, and nicely shaped,
with the long lobes that in Chinese art mark the philosopher. Small square silver fiats with rounded
comers ornamented them.
 Her face might have been painted by Toulouse-Lautrec or Degas. The skin was webbed with very fine
lines; the eyes were darkly shadowed and there was a touch of green on the lids (Egyptian?тАФI asked
myself); her mouth was wide, tolerant, but realistic. Yes, beyond all else, she seemed realistic.

And as IтАЩve indicated, I was ready for realism, so when she asked, тАЬDo you want to live?тАЭ I somehow
managed not to let slip any of the flippant answers that came flocking into my mouth, I realized that this
was the one time in a million when a big question is really meant and your answer really counts and there
are no second chances, I realized that the line of my life had come to one of .those points where thereтАЩs a
kink in it and the wrong (or maybe the right) tug can break it and that as far as I was concerned at the