"George R. R. Martin - The Glass Flower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

"Cyrain,├втВмтАв he repeated. ├втВм┼УThat alone?"

"Yes."

"On what world were you born, then?"

"Ash."

Cyrain of Ash,├втВмтАв he said. ├втВм┼УHow old are you?"

"In standard years?"

"Of course."

I shrugged. ├втВм┼УClose to two hundred. I've lost count."

"You look like a child, like a girl close to puberty, no more."

"I am older than my body,├втВмтАв I said.

"As am I,├втВмтАв he said. ├втВм┼УThe curse of the cyborg, Wisdom, is that parts can be replaced."

"Then you're immortal?├втВмтАв I challenged him.

"In one crude sense, yes."

"Interesting,├втВмтАв I said. ├втВм┼УContradictory. You come here to me, to Croan'dhenni and its Artifact, to the
game of mind. Why? This is a place where the dying come, cyborg, in hopes of winning life. We don't get
many immortals."

"I seek a different prize,├втВмтАв the cyborg said.

"Yes?├втВмтАв I prompted.

"Death,├втВмтАв he told me. ├втВм┼УLife. Death. Life."

"Two different things,├втВмтАв I said. ├втВм┼УOpposites. Enemies."

"No,├втВмтАв said the cyborg. ├втВм┼УThey are the same."
****
Six hundred standard years ago, a creature known in legend as The White landed among the
Croan'dhenni in the first starship they had ever seen. If the descriptions in Croan'dhic folklore can be
trusted, then The White was of no race I have ever encountered, nor heard of, though I am widely
traveled. This does not surprise me. The manrealm and its thousand worlds (perhaps there are twice that
number, perhaps less, but who can keep count?), the scattered empires of Fyndii and Damoosh and
g'vhern and N'or Talush, and all the other sentients who are known to us or rumored of, all this together,
all those lands and stars and lives colored by passion and blood and history, sprawling proudly across the
light-years, across the black gulfs that only the volcryn ever truly know, all of this, all of our little universe
... it is only an island of light surrounded by a vastly greater area of greyness and that fades ultimately into