"Robert F. Young - Darkspace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

mean? Words come. Birds. Insects. Small animals. There are none of these. Yes, the woods are dead.
No matter. I pump my legs harder. Ahead, I see the stream. I must catch her before she reaches it. I
pump my legs even harder. But it is no good. She enters the stream, crosses it and is gone. I try to cross
it too, even though I know I cannot. But as always I cannot even step into it.
I am weary now, and the woods are whirling. I stagger back through them to the hill and manage to
climb to my cave. I crawl inside. I will myself not to fall back to sleep, and for a while I am successful.
Then the walls crowd in on me and whirl the way the woods did, and the last of my awareness fades
away.

Today, after I chase the girl and again fail to catch her, I manage to remain awake longer than I ever
have before.
"Today" is a new word in my vocabulary, but it is not an apt one to apply to the time periods during
which I am awake. I associate "day" with a bright sky with a sun rising into it, and fields and trees and
houses spread out below. But there is no sun in the sky above the valley, and the sky is always gray. Nor
are' there any houses or fields in my milieu. The little world I live in, wherever it may be, never changes
from one of my awareness periods to the next.
But I cannot think of a better word than "day" to ascribe to my time periods.
As I sit here in the cave trying to remain awake, I realize suddenly that I know the girl I want to kill.
But I cannot think of her name, nor can I think of why I want to kill her.

After I again chase the girl to the stream and she disappears beyond it, I stand by the flowing water
and stare across it to the unobtainable other shore. Presently I see someone standing on the opposite
bank staring at me. It is the figure of a slender man wearing a red-plaid shirt, tan trousers, and black
boots. He has no hat, and his hair is the same off-brown color as mine. His face is familiar. I have seen it
somewhereтАФmany times. I keep staring at it, and as I stare the other man stares back, and at last I
realize that the face is my face, with right and left reversed as in a mirror, and that the man is I.

Again, the girl. Again, the chase through the woods. I watch her as she disappears. She does so the
instant her foot touches the opposite bank. Alice through the looking glass. I am beginning to remember
quite well now.
I stare at myself across the stream.
It is clear to me now that my valley is only a half valley.
How far does it extend to my right and to my left? What lies behind the hill that houses my cave?
When I return to the hill I climb up it past my cave. I climb and climb and climb. At length I realize I
am no longer climbing but descending. Suddenly I come to another cave. I stare at it. No, it is not
another cave, it is my cave. I have barely time to crawl inside before sleep bludgeons me.

I think of my awareness periods as being diurnal occurrences. But are they? Perhaps between them I
sleep for many days. I have no way of knowing. My awakenings are totally dependent on the whim of
the girl. Only she is capable of bringing me back to life. I wonder why she keeps doing so. Surely she
knows by now that I live in the cave. Why, then, does she keep climbing the hill to it? She seems startled
each time she sees me. Doesn't she remember my existence from one visit to the next? Apparently she
does not, or she would stay away.
My awareness periods are much longer now, and they grow longer with each awakening. I am trying
to get out of the valley. Today, instead of returning directly to the cave after the girl again escaped me, I
turned right and set forth up the valley. I walked and walked. At length I began passing among trees I
was certain I had seen before. I moved in closer to the valley's slope. Presently, through the branches of
the trees, I made out the dark mouth of a cave. I hurried up the slope toward it. The shape of the mouth
was familiar. I crawled inside. Yes, it was my cave. Sleep pounced upon me out of the shadows.