"Kim Stanley Robinson - A Short, Sharp Shock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

empty sea, an equatorial peninsula circumnavigating the great globe: it came about like this:

"Gods fly through space in bubbles of glass, and their powers exceed ours as ours exceed those of the
stones we stand on, who know only to endure. And once long ago gods voyaged through this forgotten
bay of the night sea, and to pass the time they argued a point of philosophy." And here the speaker's
voice grew harsh, the edge of every word sharper, until they were as edged as the taste of Garth's
shoulder fruit, sending the same kind of bitter shock through Thel. "They argued aesthetics, the most
metaphysical of philosophical problems. One of them said that beauty was a quality of the universe
independent of any other, that it was inlaid in the fabric of being like gravity, in a pattern that no one could
pull out. Another disagreed: beauty is the ache of mortality, this god said, an attribute of consciousness,
and nothing is beautiful except perceived through the love of lost time, so that wherever there is beauty,
love was there also, and first."

Here another voice spoke, on the breaking edge of bitterness. "And so they agreed to put it to a test, and
being gods and therefore just like us, less ignorant but no less cruel, they decided to transform and
populate one of the planets they sailed by, sinking all its land but this spine under an endless sea, and then
making what remained as beautiful as they could imagine; but leeching every living thing of love, to see if
the beauty would yet remain. And here we are."

Silence. For a moment Thel felt he was falling. A tray was passed around, and Thel did as the rest and
took from it a thin white wafer, feeling a powerful compulsion. He ate it and his skin tingled as if
crystallizing. Looking up he thought he could still see the kestrel hovering overhead, a black star among
the sparkling white ones. The mirror's surface was a dark lustrous violet now, nothing like the western
sky which had grown as dark as the east; as his gaze began to fall into the drop of rich glossy color there
was a disturbance across the circle, and one of the sorcerer children burst among them.

"The spine kings," she gasped, "at the Thera Gate."

All the sorcerers rose to their feet. "So," Tinou said, "we must hurry a little." Quickly several of them
seized Thel by the arms and legs; when he struggled he might as well have been thrashing on an iron rack.
His skin was shattering. The swimmer and the three facewomen were being held back. Thel was lifted
up, carried to the mirror.

Tinou appeared beside him, touched his temple. His smile was solicitous. "My thanks for the rescue," he
said jovially, then in more formal tones: "Through mirrors we see things right way round at last."
They shoved his left foot into the surface, which was as smooth as a glass of water full over the rim,
completely violet and completely gold at one and the same time; and the foot went in to the ankle. Now
he had a left foot made of fire, it seemed, and he twisted in the implacable grip, cried out. Tinou nodded
sympathetically, cocked his head. "It's pain most proves we live. Nothing serves better to focus our
attention on our bodies and the flesh metronomes ticking inside them, timing the bombs that will go off
some day and end the universe. Remember!"

He stepped forward and leaned over Thel's face, looked at him curiously. "There are so many kinds of
pain, really." They shoved his leg in to the hip. "Is it pulsing, throbbing, shooting, lancing, cutting, stabbing,
scalding? Is it pressing, gnawing, cramping, wrenching, burning, searing, ripping? Is it smarting, stinging,
pricking, pounding, itching, freezing, drilling? Is it superficial or profound? Can you think of anything else?
Can you tell me what eight times six equals? Can you take a full breath and hold it?"

And with each question Thel was thrust further in. A brief flare of genitals, the sickening twist of the gut,
all his skin an organ of pain, every atom of him spinning in vain efforts to fly offтАФand Tinou, smiling,