"Norstrilia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Cordwainer)

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What’s Norstrilia like?

Somebody once singsonged it up, like this:

“Grey lay the land, oh. Grey grass from sky to sky. Not near the weir, dear. Not a mountain, low or high — only hills and grey grey. Watch the dappled dimpled twinkles blooming on the star bar.

“That is Norstrilia.

“All the muddy glubbery is gone — all the poverty, the waiting and the pain. People fought their way away, their way away from monstrous forms. People fought for hands and noses, eyes and feet, man and woman. They got it all back again. Back they came from daylight nightmares, centuries when monstrous men, sucking the water around the pools, dreamed of being men again. They found it. Men they were again, again, far away from a horrid when,

“The sheep, poor beasties, did not make it. Out of their sickness they distilled immortality for man. Who says research could do it? Research, besmirch! It was a pure accident. Smack up an accident, man, and you’ve got it made.

“Beige-brown sheep lie on blue-grey grass while the clouds rush past, low overhead, like iron pipes ceilinging the world.

“Take your pick of sick sheep, man, it’s the sick that pays. Sneeze me a planet, man, or cough me up a spot of life-forever. If it’s barmy there, where the noddies and trolls like you live, it’s too right here.

“That’s the book, boy.

“If you haven’t seen it, you haven’t seen Norstrilia. If you did see it, you wouldn’t believe it. If you got there, you wouldn’t get off alive.

“Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don’t you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won’t either. That’s the final dash, flash. That’s the utter clobber, cobber.

“Charts call the place Old North Australia.” We can suppose that that is what it is like.