"Jack Vance - Marune v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Pardero worked with single-minded energy. Without fail he collected a half
measure over his quota, and sometimes a total of two measures, which first
excited jocular comment among his fellow workers, then sardonic sneers, and
finally a cold, if covert, hostility. To compound his offenses Pardero
refused to participate in the social activities of the camp, except to sit
staring into the holovision screen, and thereby was credited with
assumptions of superiority, which was indeed the case. He spent nothing at
the commissary; despite all persuasions he refused to gamble, although
occasionally he watched the games with a grim smile, which made certain of
the players uneasy. Twice his locker was ransacked by someone who hoped to
avail himself of Pardero's earnings, but Pardero had drawn no money from his
account. Woane made one or two halfhearted attempts at intimidation, then
decided to chastise the haughty Pardero, but he encountered such ferocious
retaliation that he was glad to regain the sanctuary of the mess hall; and
thereafter Pardero was strictly ignored.

At no time could Pardero detect any seepage through the barrier between his
memory and his conscious mind. Always as he worked he wondered: "What kind
of man am I? Where is my home? What do I know? Who are my friends? Who has
committed this wrong against me?" He expended his frustration on the
colucoid creeper and became known as a man possessed by as inner demon, to
be avoided as carefully as possible.

For his part Pardero banished Gaswin to the most remote corner of his mind;
he would take away as few memories as possible. The work he found tolerable;
but he resented the name Pardero. To use a stranger's name was like wearing
a stranger's clothes - not a fastidious act. Still the name served as well
as any other; it was a minor annoyance.

More urgently unpleasant was the lack of privacy. He found detestable the
close intimacy of three hundred other men, most especially at mealtimes,
when he sat with his eyes fixed on his plate, to avoid the open maws, the
mounds of food, the mastication. Impossible to ignore, however, were the
belches, grants, hisses, and sighs of satiety. Surely this was not the life
he had known in the past! What then had been his life?

The question produced only blankness, a void without information. Somewhere
lived a person who had launched him across the Cluster with his hair hacked
short and as denuded of identification as an egg. Some times when he
pondered this enemy he seemed to hear wisps of possibly imaginary
sound - echos of what might have been laughter, but when he poised his head
to listen, the pulsations ceased.

The onset of darkness continued to trouble him. Often he felt urges to go
forth into the dark - an impulse which he resisted, partly from fatigue,
partly from a dread of abnormality. He reported his nocturnal restlessness
to the camp doctor, who agreed that the tendency should be discouraged, at
least until the source was known. The doctor commended Pardero for his
industry, and advised the accumulation of at least two hundred and