"Jack Vance - Green Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

he forced himself to the consumption of what he thought of as fried animal tissue, the hypertrophied
sexual organs of plants. He experimented with erotic sensations, but found that beautiful women no
longer seemed different from the plain ones, and that he could barely steel himself to the untidy contacts.
He bought libraries of erudite books, glanced through them with contempt. He tried to amuse himself
with his old magics; they seemed ridiculous.

He forced himself to enjoy these pleasures for a month; then he fled the city and established a crystal
bubble on a crag in the Andes. To nourish himself, he contrived a thick liquid, which, while by no means
as exhilarating as the substances of the green realm, was innocent of organic contamination.

After a certain degree of improvisation and make-shift, he arranged his life to its minimum discomfort.

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 Green Magic

The view was one of austere grandeur; not even the condors came to disturb him. He sat back to ponder
the chain of events which had started with his discovery of Gerald McIntyre's workbook. He frowned.
Gerald McIntyre? He jumped to his feet, looked far over the crags.

He found Gerald McIntyre at a wayside service station in the heart of the South Dakota prairie. McIntyre
was sitting in an old wooden chair, tilted back against the peeling yellow paint of the service station, a
straw hat shading his eyes from the sun.

He was a magnetically handsome man, blond of hair, brown of skin, with blue eyes whose gaze stung
like the touch of icicles. His left thumb-nail glistened green.

Fair greeted him casually; the two men surveyed each other with wry curiosity.

"I see you have adapted yourself." said Howard Fair.

McIntyre shrugged. "As well as possible. I try to maintain a balance between solitude and the pressure
of humanity." He looked into the bright blue sky where crows flapped and called. "For many years I
lived in isolation. I began to detest the sound of my own breathing."

Along the highway came a glittering automobile, rococo as a hybrid goldfish. With the perceptions now
available to them, Fair and McIntyre could see the driver to be red-faced and truculent, his companion a
peevish woman in expensive clothes.

"There are other advantages to residence here," said McIntyre. "For instance, I am able to enrich the
lives of passersby with trifles of novel adventure." He made a small gesture; two dozen crows swooped
down and flew beside the automobile. They settled on the fenders, strutted back and forth along the
hood, fouled the windshield.

The automobile squealed to a halt, the driver jumped out, put the birds to flight. He threw an ineffectual
rock, waved his arms in outrage, returned to his car, proceeded.

"A paltry affair," said McIntyre with a sigh. "The truth of the matter is that I am bored." He pursed his
mouth and blew forth three bright puffs of smoke: first red, then yellow, then blazing blue. "I have
arrived at the estate of foolishness, as you can see."