"Last Castle, The by Jack Vance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 2)

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Kingsley Amis is one of the more astute critics of science
fiction and recently, while speaking about the mainstream
writer Anthony Burgess and his occasional forays into SF,
Amis said ". . . he's a stylist and that's rare in this field." Quite
true. But we do have lack Vance and his haunting, mood-pos-
sessed visions of the distant future, written in a style that stirs
the reader to reaction and response. Here, in this award
winning story, he once more spins his seductive magic.

Nebula Award, Best Novella 1966

THE LAST CASTLE

Jack Vance

Toward the end of a stormy summer afternoon, with the sun
finally breaking out under ragged black rain clouds, Castle
Janeil was overwhelmed and its population destroyed.
Until almost the last moment the factions among the castle
clans were squabbling as to how Destiny properly should be
met. The gentlemen of most prestige and account elected to
ignore the entire undignified circumstance and went about
their normal pursuits, with neither more nor less punctilio
than usual. A few cadets, desperate to the point of hysteria,
took up weapons and prepared to resist the final assault.
Others still, perhaps a quarter of the total population, waited
passively, readyalmost happyto expiate the sins of the
human race.
In the end death came uniformly to all; and all extracted as
much satisfaction in their dying as this essentially graceless
process could afford. The proud sat turning the pages of their
beautiful books, or discussing the qualities of a centufy-old
essence, or fondling a favorite Phane. They died without
deigning to heed the fact. The hot-heads raced up the muddy
slope which, outraging all normal rationality, loomed above
the parapets of Janeil. Most were buried under sliding rubble,
but a few gained the ridge to gun, hack, stab, until they
themseves were shot, crushed by the half-alive power-wagons,
hacked or stabbed. The contrite waited in the classic posture
of expiation, on their knees, heads bowed, and perished, so
they believed, by a process in which the Meks were symbols
and human sin the reality. In the end all were dead: gentle-
men, ladies, Phanes in the pavilions; Peasants in the stables.
Of all those who had inhabited Janeil, only the Birds survived,
creatures awkward, gauche and raucous, oblivious to pride
and faith, more concerned with the wholeness of their hides
than the dignity of their castle.
As the Meks swarmed over the parapets, the Birds departed