"C. L. Moore - Greater Than Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

mingling in an insane chaos of pleading.


Sue on her myrtle bank in a future immeasurably far ahead, child of a decadent
world slipping easily down the slope of oblivion.
Billy's world might be as glorious as he believed, but the price was too high
to pay for it. Bill remembered the set, unsmiling faces he had seen in the
streets of that world. These were men his own work had robbed of the
initiative that was their birthright. Happiness was their birthright, too, and
the power to make the decisions that determined their own futures.
No, not even for such achievements as theirs must mankind be robbed of the
inalienable right to choose for himself. If it lay in Bill Gory's power to
outlaw a system which destroyed men's freedom and honor and joy, even for such
an end as mankind's immortal progress, he had no choice to make. The price was
too high. COnfusedly he remembered something out of the dim past: "What shall
it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul. . . .
But-the alternative. Bill groaned. Happiness, peace, freedom, honor-yes, Sue's
world had all that Billy's lacked. And to what end? Indolence and decadence
and extinction for the great race that Billy's civilization would spread
gloriously among the stars.
"But I'm thinking of choice," groaned Bill to himself. "And, I haven't got any
choice! If I marry Sallie and don't finish my work- one future follows. If I
marry Marta and do finish it, the other comes. And both are bad-but what can I
do? Man or mankind; which has the stronger claim? Happiness and extinction-or
unhappiness and splendid immortality; which is better?"
"Gory-Dr. Cory!" It was Dunn's voice, heavy enough to break through the daze
of bewilderment that shrouded Bill's brain, lie turned. The Leader's iron-hard
face under the steel helmet was settling into lines of fixed resolution. Bill
saw that he had reached some decision, and knew a sudden, dazed admiration for
the man. After all, he had not been chosen Leader for nothing.
"You're a fool to tell us all this, Gory. Mad, or a fool, or both. Don't you
know what it means? Don't think we established this connection unprepared for
trouble! The same force that carries the sight and sound of us from our age to
yours can carry destruction, too! Nowhere in our past is there a record that
William Gory was killed by a blast of atom-gun fire as he sat at his desk-but,
by God, sir, if you can change that past, so can we!"
"It would mean wiping yourself out, you know," Bill reminded him as steadily
as he could, searching the angry eyes of this man who must never have faced
resolute opposition before, and wondering if the man had yet accepted a truth
that must seem insanely impossible to him. He wanted overwhelmingly to laugh,
and yet somewhere inside him a chilly conviction was growing that it might be
possible for the children of his unborn son, in a future that would never
exist, to blast him out of being. He said: "You and your whole world would
vanish jf I died."
"But not unavenged!" The Leader said it savagely, and then hesitated. "But
what am I saying? You've driven me almost as mad as you! Look, man, try to be
sensible! Can you imagine yourself dissolving into nothingness that never
existed? Neither can II"
"But if you could kill me, then how could your world ever have been born?"
"To hell with all that!" exploded Dunn. "I'm no metaphysician! I'm a fighting