[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
little of the land around them seemed to change as they did so. A chain of
small pink hills, hyperbolic paraboloid saddles precisely separating members,
seemed to grow up out of nothing in the middle distance. That was all.
"Hagen, that was an explorer, that must have been. I wish he had talked to us,
even though he frightened me. Are they still sane?"
He looked around, out over the uninhabited region toward which they had been
walking, then back toward the city. In the city was where he would have to
search.
He said: "The first veil that men ever saw falling here caught them totally by
surprise.
They described it as looking like a fine net settling toward them from an
exploding sky. It settled over the first explorers and bound itself to the
atoms of their bodies.
They are all here yet, as you know. Soon it was realized that the trapped
people were continuing to lead reasonable human lives, and that they were now
protected against aging far better than we on the outside. There's nothing so
terrible about life here.
Why shouldn't they be sane ? Many others have come here voluntarily to
settle."
"Nothing I have seen so far would lead me to do that." Her voice was growing
petulant again.
"Ailanna, maybe it will be better if we separate for a time. This world is as
safe as any. Wander and surprise yourself."
"And you, Hagen?"
"I will wander too."
He had been separated from Ailanna for a quarter of a day, and searching
steadily all the time, before he finally found her.
Mira.
He came upon her in a place that he knew she frequented, or had frequented a
hundred and thirty years before. It was one of the lower subterranean
corridors, leading to a huge pool in which real water-diving, swimming, and
other splashy sports were practiced. He was approaching her from the rear in
the corridor when she suddenly stopped walking and turned her head, as if she
knew he was there even before she saw him.
"I knew you would be back, Hagen," she said as he came up.
"Mira," he said, and then was silent for a time. Then he said: "You are still
as beautiful as ever."
"Of course." They both smiled, knowing that here she could not age, and that
change from any sort of accident was most unlikely.
He said: "I knew that, but now I see it for myself." Even without his diving
gear he could have seen enough through one hundred and thirty veils to
reassure himself of that. But with his gear on it was almost as if he were
really in her world. The two of them might hold hands, or kiss, or embrace in
Page 58
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the old old way that men and women still used as in the time when the race was
born of women's bodies. But at the same time it was impossible to forget that
the silken and impermeable veils of a hundred and thirty years would always
lie between them, and that never again in this world or any other would they
touch.
"I knew you would come back. But why did you stay away so long?"
"A few years make but little difference in how close I can come to you."
She put out her hands and held him by the upper arms, and stroked his arms. He
could feel her touch as if through layers of the finest ancient silk. "But
each year made a difference to me. I thought you had forgotten me. Remember
the vows about eternity that we once made?"
"I thought I might forget, but I did not. I found I couldn't."
A hundred and thirty years ago he and Mira had quarreled, while visiting
Azlaroc as tourists. Angry, Hagen had gone offstar without telling her; when
an alarm sounded that the yearly veil was falling early, she had been sure
that he was still somewhere on the surface, and had remained on it herself,
searching for him, and of course not
finding him. By the time he came back, meaning to patch up the quarrel, the
veil had already fallen.
She had not changed, and yet seeing her again was not the same, not all that
he had expected it to be.
The reaction to his coming back was growing in her. "Hagen, Hagen, it is you.
Really you."
He felt embarrassed. "Can you forgive me for what happened?"
"Of course I can, darling. Come, walk with me. Tell me of yourself and what
you've done."
"I...later I will try to tell you." How could he relate in a moment or two the
history of a hundred and thirty years? "What have you done here, Mira? How is
it with you?"
"How would it be?" She gestured in an old, remembered way, with a little
sensuous, unconscious movement of her shoulder. "You lived here with me; you
know how it is."
"I lived here only a very little time."
"But there are no physical changes worth mentioning. The air my yeargroup
breathes and the food we eat are recycled forever, more ours than the rooms we
live in are. But still we change and grow, though not in body. We explore the
infinite possibilities of each other and of our world. There are only eleven
hundred and six in my yeargroup, and we have as much room here as do the
billions on a planet."
"I feared that perhaps you had forgotten me."
"Can I forget where I am, and how I came to be here?" Her eyes grew very wide
and luminous not enlarged eyes like Ailanna's, Mira like most other settlers
had kept to the fashions of her year of veiling and there was a compressed
fierceness in her lips. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl wyciskamy.pev.pl
little of the land around them seemed to change as they did so. A chain of
small pink hills, hyperbolic paraboloid saddles precisely separating members,
seemed to grow up out of nothing in the middle distance. That was all.
"Hagen, that was an explorer, that must have been. I wish he had talked to us,
even though he frightened me. Are they still sane?"
He looked around, out over the uninhabited region toward which they had been
walking, then back toward the city. In the city was where he would have to
search.
He said: "The first veil that men ever saw falling here caught them totally by
surprise.
They described it as looking like a fine net settling toward them from an
exploding sky. It settled over the first explorers and bound itself to the
atoms of their bodies.
They are all here yet, as you know. Soon it was realized that the trapped
people were continuing to lead reasonable human lives, and that they were now
protected against aging far better than we on the outside. There's nothing so
terrible about life here.
Why shouldn't they be sane ? Many others have come here voluntarily to
settle."
"Nothing I have seen so far would lead me to do that." Her voice was growing
petulant again.
"Ailanna, maybe it will be better if we separate for a time. This world is as
safe as any. Wander and surprise yourself."
"And you, Hagen?"
"I will wander too."
He had been separated from Ailanna for a quarter of a day, and searching
steadily all the time, before he finally found her.
Mira.
He came upon her in a place that he knew she frequented, or had frequented a
hundred and thirty years before. It was one of the lower subterranean
corridors, leading to a huge pool in which real water-diving, swimming, and
other splashy sports were practiced. He was approaching her from the rear in
the corridor when she suddenly stopped walking and turned her head, as if she
knew he was there even before she saw him.
"I knew you would be back, Hagen," she said as he came up.
"Mira," he said, and then was silent for a time. Then he said: "You are still
as beautiful as ever."
"Of course." They both smiled, knowing that here she could not age, and that
change from any sort of accident was most unlikely.
He said: "I knew that, but now I see it for myself." Even without his diving
gear he could have seen enough through one hundred and thirty veils to
reassure himself of that. But with his gear on it was almost as if he were
really in her world. The two of them might hold hands, or kiss, or embrace in
Page 58
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the old old way that men and women still used as in the time when the race was
born of women's bodies. But at the same time it was impossible to forget that
the silken and impermeable veils of a hundred and thirty years would always
lie between them, and that never again in this world or any other would they
touch.
"I knew you would come back. But why did you stay away so long?"
"A few years make but little difference in how close I can come to you."
She put out her hands and held him by the upper arms, and stroked his arms. He
could feel her touch as if through layers of the finest ancient silk. "But
each year made a difference to me. I thought you had forgotten me. Remember
the vows about eternity that we once made?"
"I thought I might forget, but I did not. I found I couldn't."
A hundred and thirty years ago he and Mira had quarreled, while visiting
Azlaroc as tourists. Angry, Hagen had gone offstar without telling her; when
an alarm sounded that the yearly veil was falling early, she had been sure
that he was still somewhere on the surface, and had remained on it herself,
searching for him, and of course not
finding him. By the time he came back, meaning to patch up the quarrel, the
veil had already fallen.
She had not changed, and yet seeing her again was not the same, not all that
he had expected it to be.
The reaction to his coming back was growing in her. "Hagen, Hagen, it is you.
Really you."
He felt embarrassed. "Can you forgive me for what happened?"
"Of course I can, darling. Come, walk with me. Tell me of yourself and what
you've done."
"I...later I will try to tell you." How could he relate in a moment or two the
history of a hundred and thirty years? "What have you done here, Mira? How is
it with you?"
"How would it be?" She gestured in an old, remembered way, with a little
sensuous, unconscious movement of her shoulder. "You lived here with me; you
know how it is."
"I lived here only a very little time."
"But there are no physical changes worth mentioning. The air my yeargroup
breathes and the food we eat are recycled forever, more ours than the rooms we
live in are. But still we change and grow, though not in body. We explore the
infinite possibilities of each other and of our world. There are only eleven
hundred and six in my yeargroup, and we have as much room here as do the
billions on a planet."
"I feared that perhaps you had forgotten me."
"Can I forget where I am, and how I came to be here?" Her eyes grew very wide
and luminous not enlarged eyes like Ailanna's, Mira like most other settlers
had kept to the fashions of her year of veiling and there was a compressed
fierceness in her lips. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]