"Cordwainer Smith - Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Cordwainer)

I struggled to my feet. Virginia tried to help me but I was standing before she could do more than touch my sleeve.
"Let's go on."
"On?" she said.
"On to the Abba-dingo. There may be friendly machines up there. Here there is nothing but cold and wind, and the lights have not yet gone on."
She frowned. "But Macht. . . ?"
"It will be hours before he gets here. We can come back."
She obeyed.
Once again we went to the left of the boulevard. I told her to squeeze my waist while I struck the pillars, one by one. Surely there must have been a reactivating device for the passengers on the road.
The fourth time, it worked.
Once again the wind whipped our clothing as we raced upward on Alpha Ralpha Boulevard.
We almost fell as the road veered to the left. I caught my balance, only to have it veer the other way.
And then we stopped.
This was the Abba-dingo.
A walkway littered with white objects-knobs and rods and imperfectly formed balls about the size of my head.
Virginia stood beside me, silent.
About the size of my head? I kicked one of the objects aside and then knew, knew for sure, what it was. It was people. The inside parts. I had never seen such things before. And that, that on the ground, must once have been a hand. There were hundreds of such things along the wall.
"Come, Virginia," said I, keeping my voice even, and my thoughts hidden. -
She followed without saying a word. She was curious about the things on the ground, but she did not seem to recognize them.
For my part, I was watching the wall.
At last I found them-the little doors of Abba-dingo.
One said METEOROLOGICAL. It was not Old Common Tongue, nor was it French, but it was so close that I knew it had something to do with the behavior of air. I put my hand against the panel of the door. The panel became translucent and ancient writing showed through. There were numbers which meant nothing, words which meant nothing, and then:
Typhoon coming.
My French had not taught me what a "coming" was, but "typhoon" was plainly typhon, a major air disturbance. Thought I, let the -weather machines take care of the matter. It had nothing to do with us.
"That's no help," said I.
"What does it mean?" she said.
"The air will be disturbed."
"Oh," said she. "That couldn't matter to us, could it?"
"Of course not."
I tried the next panel, which said FOOD. When my hand touched the little door, there was an aching creak inside the wall, as though the whole tower retched. The door opened a little bit and a horrible odor came out of it. Then the door closed again.
The third door said HELP and when I touched it nothing happened. Perhaps it was some kind of tax-collecting device from the ancient days.
It yielded nothing to my touch. The fourth door was larger and already partly open at the bottom. At the top, the name of the door was PREDICTIONS. Plain enough, that one was, to anyone who knew Old French. The name at the bottom was more mysterious: PUT PAPER HERE it said, and I could not guess what it meant.
I tried telepathy. Nothing happened. The wind whistled past us. Some of the calcium balls and knobs rolled on the pavement. I tried again, trying my utmost for the imprint of long-departed thoughts. A scream entered my mind, a thin long scream which did not sound much like people. That was all.
Perhaps it did upset me. I did not feel "fear," but I was worried about Virginia.
She was staring at the ground.
"Paul," she said, "isn't that a man's coat on the ground among those funny things?"
Once I had seen an ancient X-ray in the museum, so I knew that the coat still surrounded the material which had provided the inner structure of the man. There was no ball there, so that I was quite sure he was dead. How could that have happened in the old days? Why did the Instrumentality let it happen? But then, the Instrumentality had always forbidden this side of the tower. Perhaps the violators had met their own punishment in some way I could not fathom.
"Look, Paul," said Virginia, "I can put my hand in."
Before I could stop her, she had thrust her hand into the flat open slot which said PUT PAPER HERE.
She screamed.
Her hand was caught.
I tried to pull at her arm, but it did not move. She began gasping with pain. Suddenly her hand came free.
Clear words were cut into the living skin. I tore my cloak off and wrapped her hand.
As she sobbed beside me I unbandaged her hand. As I did so she saw the words on her skin.
The words said, in clear French: You -will love Paul all your life.
Virginia let me bandage her hand with my cloak and then she lifted her face to be kissed. "It was worth it," she said; "it was worth all the trouble, Paul. Let's see if we can get down. Now I know."
I kissed her again and said, reassuringly, "You do know, don't you?"
"Of course," she smiled through her tears. "The Instrumentality
could not have contrived this. What a clever old machine! Is it a god or a devil, Paul?"
I had not studied those words at that time, so I patted her instead of answering. We turned to leave.
At the last minute I realized that I had not tried PREDICTIONS myself.