"Christopher Priest - The Discharge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

The Discharge

by Christopher Priest




Comme tous les songe-creux, je confondis le d├йsenchantement avec la v├йrit├й.
Jean-Paul Sartre

I emerge into my memories of life at the age of twenty. I was a soldier, recently released from boot
camp, being marched by an escouade of black-cap military policemen to the naval compound in Jethra
harbor. The war was approaching the end of its three thousandth year and I was serving in a conscript
army.

I marched mechanically, staring at the back of the man's head in front of me. The sky was dark grey with
cloud and a stiff cold wind streamed in from the sea. My awareness of life leapt into being around me. I
knew my name, I knew where we had been ordered to march, I knew or could guess where we would
be going after that. I could function as a soldier. This was my moment of birth into consciousness.

Marching uses no mental energyтАФthe mind is free to wander, if you have a mind. I record these words
some years later, looking back, trying to make sense of what happened. At the time, the moment of
awareness, I could only react, stay in step.

Of my childhood, the years leading up to this moment of mental birth, little remains. I can piece together
the fragments of a likely story: I was probably born in Jethra, university town and capital city on the
southern coast of our country. Of my parents, brothers or sisters, my education, any history of childhood
illnesses, friends, experiences, travels, I remember nothing. I grew to the age of twenty; only that is
certain.

And one other thing, useless to a soldier. I knew I was an artist.

How could I be sure of that, trudging along with the other men, in a phalanx of dark uniforms, kitbags,
clanking mess-tins, steel helmets, boots, stamping down a puddled road with a chill wind in our faces?

I knew that in the area of blankness behind me was a love of paintings, of beauty, of shape and form and
color. How had I gained this passion? What had I done with it? Aesthetics were my obsession and
fervor. What was I doing in the army? Somehow this totally unsuitable candidate must have passed
medical and psychological tests. I had been drafted, sent to boot camp; somehow a drill sergeant had
trained me to become a soldier.

Here I was, marching to war.



┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖



We boarded a troopship for passage to the southern continent, the world's largest unclaimed territory. It