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

"Just a moment, darling. Let me tear a little piece off the bandage."
She waited patiently. I tore a piece the size of my hand, and then I
picked up one of the ex-person units on the ground. It may have been
the front of an arm. I returned to push the cloth into the slot, but when
I turned to the door, an enormous bird was sitting there.
I used my hand to push the bird aside, and he cawed at me. He even seemed to threaten me with his cries and his sharp beak. I could not dislodge him.
Then I tried telepathy. I am a true man. Go away! The bird's dim mind flashed back at me nothing but no-no-no-no-no! With that I struck him so hard with my fist that he fluttered to the ground. He righted himself amid the white litter on the pavement and then, opening his wings, he let the wind carry him away.
I pushed in the scrap of cloth, counted to twenty in my mind, and pulled the scrap out.
The words were plain, but they meant nothing: You will love Virginia twenty-one more minutes.
Her happy voice, reassured by the prediction but still unsteady from the pain in her written-on hand, came to me as though it were far away. "What does it say, darling?"
Accidentally on purpose, I let the wind take the scrap. It fluttered away like a bird. Virginia saw it go.
"Oh," she cried disappointedly. "We've lost it! What did it say?" "Just what yours did." "But what words, Paul? How did it say it?"
With love and heartbreak and perhaps a little "fear," I lied to her and whispered gently,
"It said, 'Paul will always love Virginia.'"
She smiled at me radiantly. Her stocky, full figure stood firmly and happily against the wind. Once again she was the chubby, pretty Menerima whom I had noticed in our block when we both were children. And she was more than that. She was my new-found love in our new-found world. She was my mademoiselle from Martinique. The
message was foolish. We had seen from the food-slot that the machine was broken.
"There's no food or water here," said I. Actually, there was a puddle of water near the railing, but it had been blown over the human structural elements on the ground, and I had no heart to drink it.
Virginia was so happy that, despite her wounded hand, her lack of water and her lack of food, she walked vigorously and cheerfully.
Thought I to myself, Twenty-one minutes. About six hours have passed. If -we stay here we face unknown dangers.
Vigorously we walked downward, down Alpha Ralpha Boulevard. We had met the Abba-dingo and were still "alive." I did not think that I was "dead," but the words have been meaningless so long that it was hard to think them.
The ramp was so steep going down that we pranced like horses. The wind blew into our faces with incredible force. That's what it was, wind, but I looked up the word vent only after it was all over.
We never did see the whole tower-just the wall at which the ancient jetway had deposited us. The rest of the tower was hidden by clouds which fluttered like torn rags as they raced past the heavy material.
The sky was red on one side and a dirty yellow on the other.
Big drops of water began to strike at us.
"The weather machines are broken," I shouted to Virginia.
She tried to shout back to me but the wind carried her words away. I repeated what I had said about the weather machines. She nodded happily and warmly, though the wind was by now whipping her hair past her face and the pieces of water which fell from up above were spotting her flame-golden gown. It did not matter. She clung to my arm. Her happy face smiled at me as we stamped downward, bracing ourselves against the decline in the ramp. Her brown eyes were full of confidence and life. She saw me looking at her and she kissed me on the upper arm without losing step. She was my own girl forever, and she knew it.
The water-from-above, which I later knew was actual "rain," came in increasing volume. Suddenly it included birds. A large bird flapped his way vigorously against the whistling air and managed to stand still in front of my face, though his air speed was many leagues per hour. He cawed in my face and then was carried away by the wind. No sooner had that one gone than another bird struck me in the body. I looked down at it but it too was carried away by the racing current of
air. All I got was a telepathic echo from its bright blank mind: nono-no-nol
Now what? thought I. A bird's advice is not much to go upon.
Virginia grabbed my arm and stopped.
I too stopped.
The broken edge of Alpha Ralpha Boulevard was just ahead. Ugly yellow clouds swam through the break like poisonous fish hastening on an inexplicable errand.
Virginia was shouting.
I could not hear her, so I leaned down. That way her mouth could almost touch my ear.
'Where is Macht?" she shouted.
Carefully I took her to the left side of the road, where the railing gave us some protection against the heavy racing air, and against the water commingled with it. By now neither of us could see very far. I made her drop to her knees. I got down beside her. The falling water pelted our backs. The light around us had turned to a dark dirty yellow.
We could still see, but we could hot see much.
I was willing to sit in the shelter of the railing, but she nudged me. She wanted us to do something about Macht. What anyone could do, that was beyond me. If he had found shelter, he was safe, but if he was out on those cables, the wild pushing air would soon carry him off and then there would be no more Maximilien Macht. He would be "dead" and his interior parts would bleach somewhere on the open ground.
Virginia insisted.
We crept to the edge.
A bird swept in, true as a bullet, aiming for my face. I flinched. A wing touched me. It stung against my cheek like fire. I did not know that feathers were so tough. The birds must all have damaged mental mechanisms, thought I, if they hit people on Alpha Ralpha. That is not the right way to behave toward true people.
At last we reached the edge, crawling on our bellies. I tried to dig the fingernails of my left hand into the stonelike material of the railing, but it was flat, and there was nothing much to hold to, save for the ornamental fluting. My right arm was around Virginia. It hurt me badly to crawl forward that way, because my body was still damaged from the blow against the edge of the road, on the way coming up. When I hesitated, Virginia thrust herself forward. . We saw nothing.
The gloom was around us.
The wind and the water beat at us like fists.
Her gown pulled at her like a dog worrying its master. I wanted to get her back into the shelter of the railing, where we could wait for the air-disturbance to end.
Abruptly, the light shone all around us. It was wild electricity, which the ancients called lightning. Later I found that it occurs quite frequently in the areas beyond the reach of the weather machines.
The bright quick light showed us a white face staring at us. He hung on the cables below us. His mouth was open, so he must have been shouting. I shall never know whether the expression on his face showed "fear" or great happiness. It was full of excitement. The bright light went out and I thought that I heard the echo of a call. I reached for his mind telepathically and there was nothing there. Just some dim, obstinate bird thinking at me, nono-no-no-nol
Virginia tightened in my arms. She squirmed around. I shouted at her in French. She could not hear.
Then I called with my mind.
Someone else was there.