"Doorsways in the Sand 02" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

I accepted the bottle he extended, took a sip.
"Good. Very good," I said, passing it back. "What is it? And what's the occasion?"
"A very, very special cognac I've been saving for over twenty years, for tonight. The stars have finally run their fiery routes to the proper places, positioned with elegant cunning, possessed of noble portent."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm retiring, getting out of this lousy rat race."
"Oh, congratulations. I hadn't heard."
"That was by design. Mine. I can't stand formal goodbyes. Just a few more loose ends to splice, and I'll be ready to go. Next week probably."
"Well, I hope you have an enjoyable time of it. It is not often that I meet someone with the interest we share. I'll miss you."
He took a sip from his bottle, nodded, grew silent. I lit a cigarette, looked out across the sleeping town, up at the stars. The night was cool, the breeze more than a little damp. Small traffic sounds came and went, distant, insectlike. An occasional bat interrupted my tracing of constellations.
"Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth," I murmured, "Megrez, Phecda..."
"Merak and Dubhe," he said, finishing off the Big Dipper and surprising me, both for having overheard and for knowing the rest.
"Back where I left them so many years ago," he went on. "I've a very peculiar feeling now-the thing I set out to analyze tonight. Did you ever look back at some moment in your past and have it suddenly grow so vivid that all the intervening years seemed brief, dreamlike, impersonal-the motions of a May afternoon surrendered to routine?"
"No," I said.
"One day, when you do, remember-the cognac," he said, and he took another sip and passed me the bottle. I had some more and returned it to him.
"They did actually creep, though, those thousands of days. Petty pace, and all that," he continued. "I know this intellectually, though something else is currently denying it. I am aware of it particularly, because I am especially conscious of the difference between that earlier time and this present. It was a cumulative thing, the change. Space travel, cities under the sea, the advances in medicine-even our first contact with the aliens-all of these things occurred at different times and everything else seemed unchanged when they did. Petty pace. Life pretty much the same but for this one new thing. Then another, at another time. Then another. No massive revolution. An incremental process is what it was. Then suddenly a man is ready to retire, and this gives rise to reflection. He looks back, back to Cambridge, where a young man is climbing a building. He sees those stars. He feels the texture of that roof. Everything that follows is a blur, a kaleidoscopic monochrome. He is here and he is there. Everything else is unreal. But they are two different worlds, Fred-two completely different worlds-and he didn't really see it happen, never actually caught either one in the act of going or coming. And that is the feeling that accompanies me tonight."
"Is it a good feeling or a bad one?" I said.
"I don't really know. I haven't worked up an emotion to go with it yet."
"Let me know when you do, will you? You've got me curious." He chuckled. I did, too.
"You know, it's funny," I said, "that you never stopped climbing."
He was silent for a while, then said, "About the climbing, it's rather peculiar . . . Of course, it was somewhat in the nature of a tradition where I was a student, though I believe I liked it more than most. I kept at it for several years after I left the university, and then it became a more or less sporadic thing with changes of residence and lack of opportunity. I would get spells, though-compulsions, actually-when I just had to climb. I would take a holiday, then, to someplace where the architecture was congenial. I'd spend my nights scaling the buildings, clambering about rooftops and spires."
"Acrophilia," I said.
"True. Baptizing a thing doesn't explain it, though. I never understood why I did it. Still don't, for that matter. I did finally stop it for a long while, though. Middle-age hormone shift perhaps. Who knows? Then I came here to teach. It was when I heard of your own activities that I began thinking about it again. This led to the desire, the act, the return of the compulsion. It has been with me ever since. I've spent more time wondering why people quit climbing things than why they start."
"It does seem the natural thing to do."
"Exactly."
He took another drink, offered me one. I would have liked to but I know my limits, and sitting there on the ledge, I was not about to push them. So he gestured with the bottle, skyward, then: "To the lady with the smile," he said, and drank it for me.
"To the rocks of empire," he added a moment later, with a swing and a swig to another starry sector. The wrong one, but no matter. He knew as well as I that it was still below the horizon.
He settled back, found a cigar, lit it, mused: "How many eyes per head, I wonder, in the place they regard the 'Mona Lisa'? Are they faceted? Fixed? And of what color?"
"Only two. You know that. And sort of hazel-in the pictures, anyway."
"Must you deflate romantic rhetoric? Besides, the Astabigans have plenty of visitors from other worlds who will be viewing her."
"True. And for that matter, the British Crown Jewels are in the custody of people with crescent-shaped pupils. Kind of lavender-eyed, I believe."
"Sufficient," he said. "Redeeming. Thank you."
A shooting star burned its way earthward. My cigarette butt followed it.
"I wonder if it was a fair trade?" he said. "We don't understand the Rhennius machine, and even the aliens aren't certain what the star-stone represents."
"It wasn't exactly a trade."
"Two of the treasures of Earth are gone and we have a couple of theirs in return. What else would you call it?"
"A link in a kula chain," I said.
"I am not familiar with the term. Tell me about it."
"The parallel struck me as I read the details of the deal we had been offered. The kula is a kind of ceremonial voyage undertaken at various times by the inhabitants of the island groups to the east of New Guinea-the Trobriand Islanders, the Papuans of Melanesia. It is a sort of double circuit, a movement in two opposite directions among the islands. The purpose is the mutual exchange of articles having no special functional value to the various tribes involved, but possessed of great cultural significance. Generally, they are body ornaments-necklaces, bracelets-bearing names and colorful histories. They move slowly about the great circuit of the islands, accompanied by their ever-growing histories, are exchanged with considerable pomp and ceremony and serve to focus cultural enthusiasm in a way that promotes a certain unity, a sense of mutual obligation and trust. Now, the general similarity to the exchange program we are entering with the aliens seems pretty obvious. The objects become both cultural hostages and emblems of honor to the trustees. By their existence, their circulation, their display, they inevitably create something of a community feeling. This is the true purpose of a kula chain, as I see it. That's why I didn't like the word 'trade.' "
"Most interesting. None of the reports I've heard or read put it in that light-and certainly none of them compared it to the kula phenomenon. They cast it more in terms of an initiation fee for joining the galactic club, the price of admission to enjoy the benefits of trade and the exchange of ideas. That sort of thing."
"That was just the sales pitch, to ease public protest over the relinquishment of cultural treasures. All we were really promised was reciprocity in the chain. I'm sure those other things will eventually come to pass, but not necessarily as a direct result. No. Our governments were indulging in the time-honored practice of giving the people a simple, palatable explanation of a complex thing."
"I can see that," he said, and he stretched and yawned. "In. fact, I prefer your interpretation over the official one."
I lit another cigarette.
"Thanks," I said. "I feel obligated to point out, though, that I have always been a sucker for ideas I find aesthetically pleasing. The cosmic sweep of the thing-an interstellar kula chain-affirming the differences and at the same time emphasizing the similarities of all the intelligent races in the galaxy-tying them together, building common traditions . . . The notion strikes me as kind of fine."
"Obviously," he said, gesturing then toward the higher stages of the cathedral. "Tell me, are you going to climb the rest of the way up tonight?"
"Probably, in a little while. Did you want to go now?"
"No, no. I was just curious. You generally go all the way to the top, don't you?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"Not always. In fact, I've recently been keeping more to the middle heights. The reason I asked, though, is that I have a question, seeing that you are in a philosophical mood."
"It's catching."
"All right. Then tell me what it feels like when you reach the top."