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

The sun sank behind the clouds; a dismal twilight fell across the moors.
Pardero sat to the side of the recreation hall, watching a comic melodrama
on the holovision screen. He listened intently to the dialogue; each word
seemed to find an instantly receptive niche inside his brain with a semantic
concept ready at hand. His vocabulary grew and the range of his mental
processes expanded. When the program was over he sat brooding, at last aware
of his condition. He went to look into the mirror over the washbasin; the
face which looked back at him was at once strange and familiar: a somber
face with a good expanse of forehead, prominent cheekbones, hollow cheeks,
dark gray eyes, a ragged thatch of dark gold hair.

A certain burly rogue named Woane attempted a jocularity. "Look yonder at
Pardero! He stands like a man admiring a beautiful work of art!"

Pardero studied the mirror. Who was the man whose eyes stared so intently
into his own?

Woane's hoarse murmur came from across the room. "Now he admires his
haircut."

The remark amused Woane's friends. Pardero turned his head this way and
that, wondering as to the motive behind the assault on his hair. Somewhere,
it would seem, he had enemies. He turned slowly away from the mirror and
resumed his seat at the side of the room.

The last traces of light left the sky; night had come to Gaswin Camp.

Something jerked deep at the bottom of Pardero's consciousness: a compulsion
totally beyond his comprehension. He jumped to his feet. Woane looked around
half-truculently, but Pardero's glance slid past him. Woane nevertheless saw
or felt something sufficiently eery that his jaw dropped a trifle, and he
muttered to his friends. All watched as Pardero crossed to the door and went
out into the night.

Pardero stood on the porch. Floodlights cast a wan glow across the compound,
now empty and desolate, inhabited only by the wind from the moors. Pardero
stepped off the porch into the shadows. With no purpose he walked around the
edge of the compound and out upon the moor; the camp became an illuminated
island behind him.

Under the overcast, darkness was complete. Pardero felt an enlargement of
the soul, an intoxication of power; as if he were an elemental born of the
darkness, knowing no fear . . . He stopped short. His legs felt hard and
strong; his hands tingled with competence. Gaswin Camp lay a half-mile
behind him, the single visible object. Pardero took a deep throbbing breath,
and again examined his consciousness, half-hoping, half-fearful of what he
might find.

Nothing. Recollection extended to the Carfaunge spaceport. Events before