"T. K. F. Weisskopf & Greg Cox Ed. - Tomorrow Sucks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weisskopf T.K.F)

Pillar of Fire
RAY BRADBURY

He came out of the earth, hating. Hate was his father; hate was his mother.
It was good to walk again. It was good to leap up out of the earth, off of your
back, and stretch your cramped arms violently and try to take a deep breath!
He tried. He cried out.
He couldn't breathe. He flung his arms over his face and tried to breathe. It was
impossible. He walked on the earth, he came out of the earth. But he was dead. He
couldn't breathe. He could take air into his mouth and force it half down his throat,
with withered moves of long-dormant muscles, wildly, wildly! And with this little air
he could shout and cry! He wanted to have tears, but he couldn't make them come,
either. All he knew was that he was standing upright, he was dead, he shouldn't be
walking! He couldn't breathe and yet he stood.
The smells of the world were all about him. Frustratedly, he tried to smell the
smells of autumn. Autumn was burning the land down into ruin. All across the
country the ruins of summer lay; vast forests bloomed with flame, tumbled down
timber on empty, unleafed timber. The smoke of the burning was rich, blue, and
invisible.
He stood in the graveyard, hating. He walked through the world and yet could not
taste nor smell of it. He heard, yes. The wind roared on his newly opened ears. But
he was dead. Even though he walked he knew he was dead and should expect not
too much of himself or this hateful living world.
He touched the tombstone over his own empty grave. He knew his own name
again. It was a good job of carving.


WILLIAM LANTRY


That's what the gravestone said.
His fingers trembled on the cool stone surface.


BORN 1898тАФDIED 1933


Born again тАж ?
What year? He glared at the sky and the midnight autumnal stars moving in slow
illuminations across the windy black. He read the tiltings of centuries in those stars.
Orion thus and so, Aurega here! and where Taurus? There!
His eyes narrowed. His lips spelled out the year.
"2349."
An odd number. Like a school sum. They used to say a man couldn't encompass
any number over a hundred. After that it was all so damned abstract there was no
use counting. This was the year 2349! A numeral, a sum. And here he was, a man
who had lain in his hateful dark coffin, hating to be buried, hating the living people
above who lived and lived and lived, hating them for all the centuries, until today,
now, born out of hatred, he stood by his own freshly excavated grave, the smell of
raw earth in the air, perhaps, but he could not smell it!