"Love Is An Imaginary Number" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

Roger Zelazny. Love Is an Imaginary Number

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They should have known that they could not keep me bound forever.
Probably they did, which is why there was always Stella.

I lay there staring over at her, arm outstretched above her head,
masses of messed blond hair framing her sleeping face. She was more than
wife to me: she was warden. How blind of me not to have realized it sooner!

But then, what else had they done to me?

They had made me to forget what I was.

Because I was like them but not of them they had bound me to this time
and this place.

They had made me to forget. They had nailed me with love.

I stood up and the last chains fell away.

A single bar of moonlight lay upon the floor of the bedchamber. I
passed through it to where my clothing was hung.

There was a faint music playing in the distance. That was what had done
it. It had been so long since I had heard that music...

How had they trapped me?

That little kingdom, ages ago, some Other, where I had introduced
gunpowder-- Yes! That was the place! They had trapped me there with my
Other-made monk's hood and my classical Latin.

Then brainsmash and binding to this Otherwhen.

I chuckled softly as I finished dressing. How long had I lived in this
place? Forty-five years of memory--but how much of it counterfeit?

The hall mirror showed me a middle-aged man, slightly obese, hair
thinning, wearing a red sport shirt and black slacks.

The music was growing louder, the music only I could hear: guitars, and
the steady _thump_ of a leather drum.

My different drummer, aye! Mate me with an angel and you still do not
make me a saint, my comrades!

I made myself young and strong again.