"Robert F. Young - In Saturn's Rings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

had known no more ... and now the room that summer dresses in new bloom was empty, and only the
sporadic fluttering of the window curtains betrayed the presence of their ghosts.
It was as well, perhapsтАФwho knew? Matthew North sighed, and walked past the tavern doors
agape.
He avoided the expectant looks of the villagers тАФ the villagers whose function it was to cater to him
during his layover and see to it that he wanted for nothing, and beneath whose breasts pulsed not hearts
but tiny motors that never ran down, and behind whose welcoming eyes dwelled not memories but
memory banks. Only the girls had been real. The rest was technological fantasy.
The interior of the Hostel had not changed one whit. Indeed, he could have sworn that the log
burning in the great stone hearth was the same log that had been burning there the day he left. The hostler
was no longer the same though. Matthew stared at the small and portly тАФ and unquestionably human тАФ
man who came forth from behind the bar to greet him. The man smiled at his bewilderment. "Zeus IX
decided that human personnel could do the job better," he explained. "Taverns are one thing, but an inn
needs a human touch. He offered me the building, and the keep of my wife, my daughter and myself if we
would school ourselves in mid-twenty-second century lore, and condition ourselves to the
early-twentieth-century way of life which the Hostel symbolizes. I agreed to do so, and here I am.
Welcome home, Matthew North."
Clearly, the hostler had not as yet been informed that the Bimini base was no more.
Matthew did not bother to enlighten him, and allowed himself to be led over to a big wooden table
that stood before the hearth. Presently the hostler's wife тАФ a strapping woman with eyes the hue of port
wine brought in steaming platters of food and a tall and dusty bottle of Venerian Chianti. Matthew knew
an appetite he had not known in years and ate hugely. He drank largely of the wine. It was red and fiery,
and warmed his very bones. Stupor stole over him. "I would sleep," he said.

The hosteler's wife depressed a buzzer at the end of the bar, and a moment later a tall girl with
shoulder-length brown hair entered the big raftered room. She was wearing cling-slacks, and short
fleece-lined boots; a white plastijacket covered her arms and shoulders, fell loosely round her hips.
Youth shouted from her blue, smoke-filled eyes. "Faustina will show you your room," the hostler's wife
said. "Ask her for whatever you want, and she will get it for you."
The girl came forward, picked up his duffel bag, shouldered it effortlessly and led the way through the
side entrance to the period-piece outside-stairway. On the second step she paused and turned. "Would
you like some girls perhaps?"
The amusement in her eyes diminished him. He lowered his gaze to the ground. "No," he said. "Not
now."
She shrugged and resumed her ascent of the stairs. He followed, marveling at the smooth flow of her
limbs, at her graceful strength; at the youth that was manifest in her every movement. Lord, to be young
again! he thought. He felt suddenly, horribly, cheated тАФ robbed of life and love. He yearned to lean
upon her shoulder, to steal some of her youth and strength. He wanted to see desire in her eyes. Instead,
when she lingered for a moment in the doorway of the room the hostler had prepared for him, he saw
pity.
She lowered his duffel bag to the floor. "There's a buzzer by the bed," she said. "If you need anything
just press it." She turned and walked down the hall and out onto the landing.
He heard her footsteps on the stairs. Silence came.
The room was a large one. All of the rooms in the Hostel were large. Large and empty.
Over the decades he had slept in a dozen of them. He would sleep in this one now, sleep the sleep of
the dead, and he would forget stars and space, and loneliness. He would forget the pity he had seen in a
young girl's eyes and he would forget that the only love he had ever known was the love that the House
of Christopoulos had paid hard cold cash for, and itemized on the same list on which it had itemized his
bread and wine. He would forget тАФ for a little while, at least тАФ that for all the slowed-down clocks that
had given him relative immortality, he was an old, old man.