"Rajnar Vajra - Afterburn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vajra Rajnar)

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familiar. If you ignore scale, she is shaped like a little girl. And her
enormous face is terribly young. She looks no older than seven or eight. It
seems to me I've seen that face before, wearing a very different expression. I
don't know why, but I feel sad. The memory is no more precise and graspable
than a distant nebula....
She sees me, smiles, and hunkers down to place her hand, palm up, on
the polished marble cathedral floor. I obey the implied command, climbing up
and standing on her open palm. She stands straight, effortlessly lifting me
forty feet off the ground. She looks down upon me, still smiling, but a single
tear falls from a watermelon-size eye and bathes me in a salty shower.
I am renewed! Weeks of exhaustion and fear are washed away! For one
disorienting moment, I feel the textures of a computer controller -- an
old-fashioned trackball -- under my right hand, my thumb resting on the smooth
wheel. Then the trackball softens, evaporates, and I can see my arms.
They've evolved since I last glimpsed them. They are still horribly
mutilated, but the skin is pink and hale. What were once melted stubs are now
midget fingers, three on one hand and two on the other, keeping the full-sized
ones company. I can wiggle the entire ten-piece collection. I stare at the
glossy yellow tubes, catheters, and sensors attached to my arms and feel an
unaccountable burst of pride. It's working! But then the vision fades along
with pride.
Suddenly, I realize that the goddess -- what else could she be? -- is
addressing me! It's hard to understand her because she sounds like dozens of
deep, strange voices speaking an unearthly tongue. My ear adjusts. I am
hearing ordinary English, spoken with a childish lisp. But there is nothing
childish about what the goddess is saying.
"Can you comprehend me now, Paul?"
"Yes." My own voice sounds absurdly high and squeaky.
"Then I offer you congratulations. You are now approaching the final
levels."
"Final levels?"
"These are the conscious levels and if you wish to attain them you can
only do so consciously."
Abruptly, I am deeply fearful, I don't know why. "What do you mean?"
She moves her face closer to mine and I realize with an unpleasant
shock that her forehead has a skin-graft tautness. "You have decisions to
make."
I have to swallow twice before I can get my voice to work. "What
decisions?"
Her left eye -- huge, clear, and innocent -- becomes liquid with
another goddess-sized tear. But this time as the tear falls, it falls as a
flat sheet rather than a drop and freezes in midair. It lengthens, becoming
progressively more reflective as it expands, until I am facing a perfect
rectangular mirror. I can see the cathedral behind me. Thin colored beams of
light are streaming through the open roof, poking crepuscular holes in the