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

"Such love is an imaginary number," I told her, and I was raised from
where I lay and borne away.

She followed behind, weeping.

"I pleaded with them to give you a chance at peace, but you threw that
gift in my face."

"The peace of the eunuch; the peace of lobotomy, lotus and Thorazine,"
I said. "No, better they work their wills upon me and let their truth give
forth its lies as they do."

"Can you really say that and mean it?" she asked. "Have you already
forgotten the sun of the Caucasus--the vulture tearing at your side, day
after hot red day?"

"I do not forget," I said, "but I curse them. I will oppose them until
the ends of When and Wherever, and someday I shall win."

"I love you," she said.

"How can you say that and mean it?"

"Fool!" came a chorus of voices, as I was laid upon this rock in this
cavern and chained.

All day long a bound serpent spits venom into my face, and she holds a
pan to catch it. It is only when the woman who betrayed me must empty that
pan that it spits into my eyes and I scream.

But I _will_ come free again, to aid long-suffering mankind with my
many gifts, and there will be a trembling on high that day I end my bondage.
Until then, I can only watch the delicate, unbearable bars of her fingers
across the bottom of that pan, and scream each time she takes them away.