"C. L. Moore - Song in a Minor Key" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

He foiled over violently, opening his eyes. No use remembering her. There had
been that fatal flaw in him from the very first, he knew now. If he were the
boy again knowing all he knew today, still the flaw would be there and sooner
or later the same thing must have happened that had happened

twenty years ago. He had been born for a wilder age, when man took what they
wanted and held what they could without respect for law. Obedience was not in
him, and soтАФ

As vividly as on that day it happened he felt the same old surge of anger and
despair twenty years old now, felt the ray-gun bucking hard against his
unaccustomed fist, heard the hiss of its deadly charge ravening into a face he
hated. He could not be sorry, even now, for that first man he had killed. But
in the smoke of that killing had gone up the columned house and the future he
might have had, the boy himselfтАФ lost as Atlantis nowтАФand the girl with the
honey-colored hair and much, much else besides. It had to happen, he knew. He
being the boy he was, it had to happen. Even if he could go back and start all
over, the tale would be the same.

And it was all long past now, anyhow; and nobody remembered any more at all,
except himself. A man would be a fool to lie here thinking about it any
longer.

Smith grunted and sat up, shrugging the gun into place against his ribs.