"John Norman - Gor 02 - Outlaw of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

quiet, courteous Oxford gentleman, except for that hair. And then we
weren't sure.

To my consternation and that of the college, Cabot disappeared shortly
after the conclusion of the first semester. I am sure that this was not of
his own intention. Cabot is a man who honours his commitments.

At the end of the semester, Cabot, like the rest of us, was weary of the
academic routine, and was seeking some diversion. He decided to go camping
- by himself - in the nearby White Mountains, which were very beautiful
then, in the white, brittle splendour of a New Hampshire February.

I loaned him some of my camping gear and drove him into the mountains,
dropping him off beside the highway. He asked me, and I am certain he was



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serious, to meet him at the same place in three days. I returned at the
determined time, but he failed to keep the rendezvous. I waited several
hours, and then returned at the same time the next day. Still he did not
appear. Accordingly, then alarmed, I notified the authorities, and, by
afternoon, a large-scale search was underway.

Eventually we found what we supposed to be the ashes of his fire, near a
large flat rock some nine hours' climb from the highway. Our search,
otherwise, was fruitless. Yet, several months later, I understand that Tarl
Cabot stumbled out of these same mountains, alive and well, but apparently
under the stress of some emotional shock which had culminated in amnesia -
at least for that period during which he had been missing.

He never returned to teach at the college, to the relief of several of my
elder colleagues who now confessed that they thought that young Cabot had
never really fitted in. Shortly thereafter I determined that I did not fit
in either, and left the college. I did receive a cheque from Cabot to cover
the cost of my camping equipment, which he had apparently lost. It was a
thoughtful gesture but I wish instead that he had stopped to see me. I
would have seized his hand and forced him to speak to me, to tell me what
had happened.

Somehow, unlike my colleagues at the school, I had found the amnesia
account too simple. It was not an adequate explanation; it couldn't be. How
had he lived for those months, where had he been, what had he done?

It was almost seven years after I had known Tarl Cabot at the college when
I saw him on the streets of Manhattan. By that time I had long ago saved
the money I needed for law school and had not taught for three years.
Indeed, I was then completing my studies at the school of law associated