"Zelazny, Roger - Creatures Of Light And Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

УMen may begin and end in many ways,Ф says Anubis. УSome may start as machines and gain their humanity slowly. Others may end as machines, losing humanity by pieces as they live. That which is lost may always be regained. That which is gained may always be lost. ЧWhat are you, Wakim, a man or a machine?Ф
УI do not know.Ф
УThen let me confuse you further.Ф
Anubis gestures, and WakimТs arms and legs come loose, fall away. His metal torso clangs against stone, rolls, then lies at the foot of the throne.
УNow you lack mobility,Ф says Anubis.
He reaches forward with his foot and touches a tiny switch at the back of WakimТs head.
УNow you lack all senses but hearing.Ф
УYes,Ф answers Wakim.
УNow a connection is being attached to you. You feel nothing, but your head is opened and you are about to become a part of the machine which monitors and maintains this entire world. See it all now!Ф
УI do,Ф he replies, as he becomes conscious of every room, corridor, hall and chamber in the always dead never alive world that has never been a world, a world made, not begotten of coalesced starstuff and the fires of creation, but hammered and jointed, riveted and fused insulated and decorated, not into seas and land and air and life, but oils and metals and stone and walls of energy, all hung together within the icy void where no sun shines; and he is aware of distances, stresses, weights, materials, pressures and the secret numbers of the dead. He is not aware of his body, mechanical and disconnected. He knows only the waves of maintenance movement that flow through the House of the Dead. He flows with them and he knows the colorless colors of quantity perception.
Then Anubis speaks again:
УYou know every shadow in the House of the Dead. You have looked through all the hidden eyes.Ф
УYes.Ф
УNow see what lies beyond.Ф
There are stars, stars, scattered stars, blackness all between. They ripple and fold and bend, and they rush toward him, rush by him. Their colors are blazing and pure as angelsТ eyes, and they pass near, pass far, in the eternity through which he seems to move. There is no sense of real time or real movement, only a changing of the field. A great blue Tophet Box of a sun seems to soar beside him for a moment, and then again comes black, all about him, and more small lights that pass, distantly.
And he comes at last to a world that is not a world, citrine and azure and green, green, green. A green corona hangs about it, at thrice its own diameter, and it seems to pulsate with a pleasant rhythm.
УBehold the House of Life,Ф says Anubis, from somewhere.
And he does. It is warm and glowing and alive. He has a feeling of aliveness. УOsiris rules the House of Life,Ф says Anubis. And he beholds a great bird-head atop human shoulders, bright yellow eyes within it, alive, alive-oh; and the creature stands before him on an endless plain of living green which is superimposed upon his view of the world, and he holds the Staff of Life in his one hand and the Book of Life in his other. He seems to be the source of the radiant warmth.
Wakim then hears the voice of Anubis again:
УThe House of Life and the House of the Dead contain the Middle Worlds.Ф
And there is a falling, swirling sensation, and Wakim looks upon stars once more, but stars separated and held from other stars by bonds of force that are visible, then invisible, then visible again, fading, coming, going, white, glowing lines, fluctuating.
УYou now perceive the Middle Worlds of Life,Ф says Anubis.
And dozens of worlds roll before him like balls of exotic marble, stippled, gauged, polished, incadescent.
УЕ Contained,Ф says Anubis. УThey are contained within the field which arcs between the only two poles that matter.Ф
УPoles?Ф says the metal head that is Wakim.
УThe House of Life and the House of the Dead. The Middle Worlds about their suns do move, and all together go on the paths of Life and Death.Ф
УI do not understand,Ф says Wakim.
УOf course you do not understand. What is at the same time the greatest blessing and the greatest curse in the universe?Ф
УI do not know.Ф
УLife,Ф says Anubis, Уor death.Ф
УI do not understand,Ф says Wakim. УYou used the superlative. You called for one answer. You named two things, however.Ф
УDid I?Ф asks Anubis. УReally? Just because I used two words, does it mean that I have named two separate and distinct things? May a thing not have more than one name? Take yourself for an example. What are you?Ф
УI do not know.Ф
УThat may be the beginning of wisdom, then. You could as easily be a machine which I chose to incarnate as a man for a time and have now returned to a metal casing, as you could be a man whom I have chosen to incarnate as a machine.Ф
УThen what difference does it make?Ф
УNone. None whatsoever. But you cannot make the distinction. You cannot remember. Tell me, are you alive?Ф
УYes.Ф
УWhy?Ф
УI think. I hear your voice. I have memories. I can speak.Ф
УWhich of these qualities is life? Remember that you do not breathe, your nervous system is a mass of metallic strands and I have burnt your heart. Remember, too, that I have machines that can outreason you, outremember you, outtalk you. What does that leave you with as an excuse for saying you are alive? You say that you hear my voice, and СhearingТ is a subjective phenomenon? Very well. I shall disconnect your hearing also. Watch closely to see whether you cease to existФ
Е One snowflake drifting down a well, a well without waters, without walls, without bottom, without top. Now take away the snowflake and consider the driftingЕ.
After a timeless time, AnubisТ voice comes once again: УDo you know the difference between life and death?Ф
У СIТ am life,Ф says Wakim. УWhatever you give or take away, if СIТ remain it is life.Ф
УSleep,Ф says Anubis, and there is nothing to hear him, there in the House of the Dead.
When Wakim awakens, he finds that he has been set upon a table near to the throne, and he can see once more, and he regards the dance of the dead and he hears the music to which they move.
УWere you dead?Ф asks Anubis.
УNo,Ф says Wakim. УI was sleeping.Ф
УWhat is the difference?Ф
У СIТ was still there, although I did not know it.Ф
Anubis laughs.