"He Who Shapes by Roger Zelazny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Awards)

All science fiction writers know that reality is more fantastic
than any publishable fiction. Here is one proof. The story you
are about to read was tied on the first ballot with Brian W.
Aldiss's "The Saliva Tree." We accordingly held a second
ballot. The result? Another tie.
Feeling that it would be fruitless to pursue this any further (as
well as illegalthe rules made no provision for a third ballot),
we gladly awarded Nebulas to both authors.
Here is another story only Zelazny could have written: an
intricate and subtle marriage of reality and hallucination,
delicate eroticism, horror, all turning around a brilliantly
imagined new kind of psychialrist

Nebula Award, Best Novella 1965 (tied with "The
Saliva Tree," by Brian W. Aldiss)

HE WHO SHAPES

Roger Zeiazny

Lovely as it was, with the blood and all, Render could sense
that it was about to end.
Therefore, each microsecond would be better off as a minute,
he decidedand perhaps the temperature should be increased
. . . Somewhere, just at the periphery of everything, the dark-
ness halted its constriction.
Something, like a crescendo of subliminal thunders, was
arrested at one raging note. That note was a distillate of shame
and pain, and fear.
The Forum was stifling.
Caesar cowered outside the frantic circle. His 'forearm
covered his eyes but it could not stop the seeing, not this time.
The senators had no faces and their garments were spattered
with blood. All their voices were like the cries of birds. With an
inhuman frenzy they plunged their daggers into the fallen
figure.
All, that is, but Render.
The pool of blood in which he stood continued to widen. His
arm seemed to be rising and falling with a mechanical
regularity and his throat might have been shaping bird-cries,
but he was simultaneously apart from and a part of the scene.
For he was Render, the Shaper.
Crouched, anguished and envious, Caesar wailed his
protests.
"You have slain him! You have murdered Marcus Antonius
a blameless, useless fellow!"
Render turned to him, and the dagger in his hand was quite
enormous and quite gory.
"Aye," said be.