"Janet Morris - Crusaders In Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

hour on the hour, for howsoever long he failed to make the clocks toll
simultaneously.
The snowman outside his window looked just like him, and what was happening to
it was so awful, and so graphic, and the demons were having so much fun doing
it, that Zeno's hands were trembling like leaves before he'd even gotten down
to work.
It wasn't so much the fear of intermittent punishment that made him shake, but
the fear of getting caught in one of those space-time glitches while he had a
demon up his ass.


GILGAMESH REDUX
Janet Morris

"To the end of the Outback, and back again."
Silverberg: Gilgamesh In The Outback

"The lord Gilgamesh, toward the Land of the Living set his mind," chanted
Enkidu, hairy and bold, trekking beside Gilgamesh up to the mountain peak.
And Gilgamesh, gasping for breath because the trek was hard and the air was
thin, interrupted, "Enlfl, the mighty mountain, the father of all the gods,
has determined the fate of Gilgamesh - determined it for kingship, but for
eternal life. He has not determined it..."
These lines, from the epic sung as The Death of Gilgamesh for ages, shut both
men's mouths.
But in the inner ear of Gilgamesh, the poem continued, fragments sharp as
spear points in a wild boar's heart: "Supremacy over mankind has Enlil granted
thee, Gilgamesh. Battles from which none may retreat has he granted thee.
Onslaughts unrivalled has he granted thee ...in life. Be not aggrieved, be not
sad of heart.
On the bed of Fate now lies Gilgamesh and he rises not ... he rises not... he
rises not."
On the top of the mountain peak now stood the lord Gilgamesh and his servant -
his friend - Enkidu. And Gilgamesh wondered if Enlil inhabited this peak even
in Hell.
It was silly, it was foolish, to have climbed this mountain in search of more
than he could ever find in Hell. For that was where Gilgamesh now was, who had
sought Eternal Life and now sought Eternal Death-the peaceful sleep that had
been promised him while all around him were the lamentations of his family.
In life. So long ago Uruk.
For a time the presence of Enkidu had soothed him, but now it did not. Below
and behind them was the caravan they had joined because Enkidu had seen a
woman there he craved. And because the caravan was well supplied with weapons
that were to Enkidu like toys to a greedy child: plasma rifles, molecular
disrupters, enhanced kinetic-kill pistols that fired bullets tipped with
thallium shot whose spread was as wide as Gilgamesh's outstretched arms.
Cowards' weapons. Evil upon evil here at die end of the Outback. Such was
behind Gilgamesh, down on the flat among the covered wagons of the mongrel
caravanners with whom, for the sake of Enkidu, he'd fallen in.
Before him, on the far side of this mountain whose peak Enlil did not inhabit,