"Robert F. Young - The Questenestal Towers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

the quetenestel towers
by . . . Robert F. Young

A vision of beauty becomes a part of the mind that rejoices in its splendor.
No wonder the Martian towers Menaced Thorton's sanity.

In the fullest, most audacious sense Robert F. Young is a completely unspoiled writer. He may
never be an inordinately prosperous writer---he may even occasionally -go hungry. We don't know
and we refuse to venture a prediction. But when a writer is true to himself, and wholly dedicated
to an inner vision of soaring beauty and abiding worth Time has often a curious way of making
him famous overnight. You'll see what we mean when you read this memorable story.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

SOMEHOW Thorton had not felt like going with the others. Something in him had rebelled against
squandering the last precious hours of his vacation in the flamboyant carnival town across the canal, and
he had stayed behind.
It was comfortable there in the late afternoon sunlight, his body propped lazily against the soft grass
of the canal bank. It was calm and peaceful, and a million miles from tomorrow. That was where
tomorrow belonged, Thorton thought. A million milesтАФor sixty million, which was the same thing
тАФaway. He never wanted it to come any closer.
Beyond the vivid blue of the canal he could see the Quetenestel Towers rising into the violet sky. The
mild sunlight had caught their crystalline patterns and transformed them into a dazzling tapestry of light
shards. The towers were as integral a part of the Martian landscape as the canal was, Thorton thought.
They were as endemic as the yellow sea of Martian maize rolling away beyond them to the distant
crimson mountains: They looked as though they had been standing there for a million million years, the
scintillating culmination of all the art of old Mars. They were the sort of monument you'd have expected a
great civilization to leave behind itтАФthe sort of symbol you wanted a great civilization to leave behind it.
Quetenestel, according to the little guide book issued by Interplanetary, Inc., had lived during the
hedonistic centuries preceding the Martian siroccos. While his contemporaries were frantically burrowing
underground, excavating the intricate system of grottoes that were so shortly and tragically to become
catacombs, he had made his last defiant gesture against mortality and built his fabulous towers.
Thorton's mind evoked a vivid image of an old and wizened man, his elfin face crinkled by two
Martian centuries, his scrawny arms gesticulating, his bird-like voice shrill as he strode back and forth
along the canal bank directing the exacting creation of his ultimate masterpiece. Like some fantastic
Cheops. Like some alien Ozymandias.
Thorton saw the towers rising, section by shining section, the scintillating columns stabbing ever
higher into the swiftly darkening sky; he saw the first drab murk of the dust storms curtaining the horizon.
And then he saw the dust-misted years swirl leadenly by, the sun a bloodshot eye in a lowering sky that
had forgotten day and remembered only night.
And all the while the timeless towers remained standing, while the blue canals became pitiful striations
wrinkling the faces of newborn deserts and the cities became memories choked with dust. Standing, still,
when the first survivor poked his blanched face out of his mountain burrow and crept into the slowly
brightening sunlight. Standing, sedate and calm, to greet the space-jaundiced eye of the first Earthman to
step from the bowels of the first Earth-Mars spaceship.
"You admire the towers, senir?"
 Very startled, Thorton twisted around. He saw the little Martian peasant standing on the canal path
just above him. The peasant bowed in the humble courtesy of his race.
"I am sorry to have disturbed you," he said. "I was but passing to my batiqueno when I saw you