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-I hope that you're able to listen to all this, Grainger, though I'm not sure
that you can. Perhaps it doesn't matter, to you. Perhaps it shouldn't matter
to me. Is this the real me, or is it the human me? But there's no difference.
Not really.
-I think you still hate me, Grainger. I don't think there's any other way,
for you. I love you... there's no other way for me. I don't want to give you
any advice. I don't want to tell you any secrets. I don't want to make you
take anything you don't want to take. But I'd like you to listen. I want you
to remember me as something that I am, not just something you think I am-some
excuse you've made up for me, some name you can give me and confine me with.
Do you see? Do you see, through the confusion and the wandering, what I'm
trying to put into your mind? Some idea of me. Some grain of an attitude by
which you can look at me and see me.
-Think of me. Think about me.
-Perhaps that says it all. I don't know what else I can add. How do you put
yourself into words in a matter of minutes? You know all the rest. You know
that if I do die you'll have to get along without me-play your own panpipes
and talk your own Gallacellan. You know that there may come a time when you'll
wish I was with you. I don't have to remind you of that. You know that it's
going to be a little bit harder, maybe inside as well as out. But still you'll
be happy, because right now and until I die, you hate me. That's life.
-Isn't it?
18
It's not all hate.
That's all I had to say. That's all I had to tell him. What else was there?
In any case, we were in a hurry. We got Eve onto the middle of the sled, and
with one of us on either side she was as secure as it was possible to keep
her. How secure her mind would be we couldn't know. In all probability, the
coma was her best possible defence against the possibility of invasion and
destruction, but it might work the other way and render her all the more
vulnerable. We couldn't do anything about that, except hope.
Nick and I were both drugged up. We were both slow and euphorically calm. We
didn't dare shoot anything like that into Eve.
In any case, we were all in the arms of fortune. It wasn't courage or genius
which had brought me to the Sister Swan and it wasn't those things which would
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take the three of us back. We went forth into the inferno, and fired the jets,
pointed our nose at the star in the sky, and hoped.
We didn't know how long the journey would take, or even whether real time was
of any significance here.
As before, the assault took time to build up, but it kept on building. I felt
it clamp itself into my skull like something wet and sticky. I felt it
permeating my brain.
This time, I was oddly detached. I was aware of what was happening and I knew
what was going to happen. Having played the game before I knew the shape of
it, the way it would be won, and the probable result. I was reliving rather
than living. It was as though the outward journey had provided me with a
corridor of retreat. I was confident, this time, that I could get through. I
was able to observe and monitor my own thoughts and reactions.
I was confident on the wind's behalf too. Somehow, I felt he was going to
make it.
The aspect of the incredible continuum was no longer frightening in itself.
The invasion of my mind by its emphatic forces was repulsive, but not
horrifying. My reaction was not extreme. I did not contribute so much myself
to the distortion of perception. I yielded none of my sanity.
Whether this was entirely a good thing I can never be sure. Had it not been
for my preparedness, my confidence, I would never have begun to sense even a
glimmer of order in the chaos. I knew that to discover some sense in it was
dangerous, but I could not help myself. Somehow, I was no longer so utterly
remote, so entirely locked up in myself. I was able to feel that there was
being behind it all, that on its own terms, this universe was just as real and
sane as our own. Its spatiotemporal fabric might be horribly twisted from our [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]