"Dan Simmons - Carrion Comfort (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

I despair at the rise of modern violence. I truly give in to despair at times, that deep,
futureless pit of despair that poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called carrion comfort. I watch the
American slaughterhouse, the casual attacks on popes, presidents, and uncounted others, and I
wonder whether there are many more out there with the Ability or whether butchery has simply
become the modern way of life.
All humans feed on violence, on the small exercises of power over another. But few have tasted-as
we have-the ultimate power. And without the Ability, few know the unequaled pleasure of taking a
human life. Without the Ability, even those who do feed on life cannot savor the flow of emotions
in stalker and victim, the total exhilaration of the attacker who has moved beyond all rules and
punishments, the strange, almost sexual submission of the victim in that final second of truth
when all options are canceled, all futures denied, all possibilities erased in an exercise of
absolute power over another.
I despair at modern violence. I despair at the impersonal nature of it and the casual quality that
has made it accessible to so many. I had a television set until I sold it at the height of the
Vietnam War. Those sanitized snippets of death-made distant by the camera's lens-meant nothing to
me. But I believe it meant something to these cattle that surround me. When the war and the
nightly televised body
counts ended, they demanded more, more, and the movie screens and streets of this sweet and dying
nation have provided it in mediocre, mob abundance. It is an addiction I know well.
They miss the point. Merely observed, violent death is a sad and sullied tapestry of confusion.
But to those of us who have Fed, death can be a sacrament.
"My turn! My turn!" Nina's voice still resembled that of the visiting belle who had just filled
her dance card at Cousin Celia's June ball.
We had returned to the parlor. Willi had finished his coffee and requested a brandy from Mr.
Thorne. I was embarrassed for Willi. To have one's closest associates show any hint of unplanned
behavior was certainly a sign of weakening Ability. Nina did not appear to have noticed.
"I have them all in order," said Nina. She opened the scrapbook on the now-empty tea table. Willi


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went through them carefully, sometimes asking a question, more often grunting assent. I murmured
occasional agreement although I had heard of none of them. Except for the Beatle, of course. Nina
saved that for near the end.
"Good God, Nina, that was you?" Willi seemed near anger. Nina's Feedings had always run to Park
Avenue suicides and matrimonial disagreements ending in shots fired from expensive, small-caliber
ladies' guns. This type of thing was more in Willi's crude style. Perhaps he felt that his
territory was being invaded. "I mean . . . you were risking a lot, weren't you? It's so . . . damn
it . . . so public."
Nina laughed and set down the calculator. "Willi dear, that's what the Game is about, is it not?"
Willi strode to the liquor cabinet and refilled his brandy snifter. The wind tossed bare branches
against the leaded glass of the bay window. I do not like winter. Even in the
South it takes its toll on the spirit.
"Didn't this guy . . . what's his name . . . buy the gun in Hawaii or someplace?" asked Willi from
across the room. "That sounds like his initiative to me. I mean, if he was already stalking the
fellow-"
"Willi dear," Nina's voice had gone as cold as the wind that raked the branches, "no one said he
was stable. How many of yours are stable, Willi? But I made it happen, darling. I chose the place
and the time. Don't you see the irony of the place, Willi? After that little prank on the director