"Roger Zelazny - The Doors of His Face The Lamps of His Mouth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

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Roger Zelazny. The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth

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I'm a baitman. No one is born a baitman, except in a French novel where
everyone is. (In fact, I think that's the title, _We are All Bait_. Pfft!)
How I got that way is barely worth the telling and has nothing to do with
neo-exes, but the days of the beast deserve a few words, so here they are.

The Lowlands of Venus lie between the thumb and forefinger of the
continent known as Hand. When you break into Cloud Alley it swings its
silverblack bowling ball toward you without a warning. You jump then, inside
that firetailed tenpin they ride you down in, but the straps keep you from
making a fool of yourself. You generally chuckle afterwards, but you always
jump first.

Next, you study Hand to lay its illusion and the two middle fingers
become dozen-ringed archipelagoes as the outers resolve into greengray
peninsulas; the thumb is too short, and curls like the embryo tail of Cape
Horn.

You suck pure oxygen, sigh possibly, and begin the long topple back to
the Lowlands.

There, you are caught like an infield fly at the Lifeline landing
area--so named because of its nearness to the great delta in the Eastern
Bay--located between the first peninsula and "thumb." For a minute it seems
as if you're going to miss Lifeline and wind up as canned seafood, but
afterwards--shaking off the metaphors--you descend to scorched concrete and
present your middle-sized telephone directory of authorizations to the
short, fat man in the gray cap. The papers show that you are not subject to
mysterious inner rottings and etcetera. He then smiles you a short, fat,
gray smile and motions you toward the bus which hauls you to the Reception
Area. At the R.A. you spend three days proving that, indeed, you are not
subject to mysterious inner rottings and etcetera.

Boredom, however, is another rot. When your three days are up, you
generally hit Lifeline hard, and it returns the compliment as a matter of
reflex. The effects of alcohol in variant atmospheres is a subject on which
the connoisseurs have written numerous volumes, so I will confine my remarks
to noting that a good binge is worthy of at least a week's time and often
warrants a lifetime study.

I had been a student of exceptional promise (strictly undergraduate)
for going on two years when the _Bright Water_ fell through our marble
ceiling and poured its people like targets into the city.

Pause. The Worlds Almanac re Lifeline: "...Port city on the eastern