[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.And what for? So he could commit suicide in a dark nebula.The score might be levelbetween me and fate, because Johnny was still alive.One apiece.But even so it was annoying to thinkthat so little had been gained by saving Nick's worthless hide.Poor Nick.A sucker all along the line.Aprince of suckers.His mother had no right to turn him out of his playpen with so little preparation for thewicked wide world and its evil ways.A good guy, Nick.A nice guy.I knew I could forget Nick, but I knew I wouldn't.Somehow, he had contrived to leave an impression.Eve was different.Eve I couldn't forget even if I wanted to.She'd echoed in my mind just a little too loud.She'd echoed Lapthorn, and I could no longer think Lapthorn without knowing that there were two ofthem.Brother and sister.Man and ghost.I couldn't count the number of times my reaction-pattern toLapthorn had taken hold of my behaviour toward Eve.She might have interpreted that as an endlessseries of small cruelties.She could hardly understand.I'd never tried to explain.She could have diedhating me.And all for nothing.All for a fake relationship.I hadn't loved Eve.Not ever.But I just might Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlhave, perhaps, if it hadn't been for the Lapthorn reactions that had got into me.You did all this to me, I accused the wind.You've turned my head around.If it wasn't for you.why thehell should I feel guilty? Was it me who killed them?-No, he said.We made level time to Darlow.There was plenty of time for things to happen, but nothing did.TheSwan was in perfect shape.All the pounding she'd taken in the Leucifer system had left not a mark onher.They'd done a good job back on New Alexandria.She was her old self, in every detail.If it weremechanically and humanly possible to make the flight that Charlot had planned, then the Swan and I werefit for it.The only question mark was Johnny.Darlow was a desolate ball of impure iron whose only conceivably useful feature was its closeness to theNightingale Nebula.It was a small planet of a tired rose-colored sun.Its air wasn't poisonous but itcontained very little oxygen and life of our kind could only be supported courtesy of abundant artificialaid.The planet wasn't inhabited, in the normal sense of the word, but New Alexandria had maintained adome there for a long time, partly as an element in the vast web of New Alexandria interests whichthreaded the known galaxy, and partly for the specific purpose of observing the enigmatic Nightingale.The base never supported anything resembling a thriving community, but its population tended to be fairlystable; there were men and women who spent all their working lives there, and a handful of children hadbeen born there.Technically, therefore, it counted as one of the vast number of "human" worlds, and likeEarth or Penaflor it added no less and no more than one to the numerical total.On statistics like that thesuccess of the human race is measured.People will claim we are the galaxy's primary inhabitants becausewe "possess" more worlds than the Khor-monsa, the Gallacellans, and all the rest put together.Peopledo say it.All the time.The people who lived their lives here spent the time in between ships digging holesin the ground looking for whatever they might find or writing the great Darlovian novel.Many of them hada fierce patriotism.It had to be fierce, because there was no other way to answer the questions put to it.The transients-mostly peripatetic technical staff theoretically based on New Alexandria (though theymight never see "home" in their entire lives) were forced to acquire a shadow of the same patriotism.They couldn't live without it.The spacemen who used Darlow as a stopover or a communication pointhad to respect the idiosyncrasies of the people.You insult the honour of Darlow at your peril.Pride is adangerous thing not to have, or at least to know about, on a world like that.Somehow, I couldn't help thinking that Abram Adams- the senior man on the base and virtually theworld's dictator-was something other than human.I could see hardly anything that we held in commonexcept a shape and a language.And the Khor-monsa always speak better English than most grounders.The smaller a world the faster it gains and loses words from its pooled vocabulary.The only standardtongue in this day and age is the spacer tongue.The dome was no more than a mile across and it wasn't exactly high-density living inside.People on littleworlds like lots of personal space.New Alexandria was prepared to cater to that, uneconomic or not.Tragedies had been known to happen in domes in the early days, and still did sometimes.This meant thatwe were each assigned quarters considerably more salubrious than a starship cabin, and apparently quiteluxurious for such a poor world.My rooms included a sitting room whose north wall was a great curved Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlwindow, commanding a fine view of the bubble-city [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.And what for? So he could commit suicide in a dark nebula.The score might be levelbetween me and fate, because Johnny was still alive.One apiece.But even so it was annoying to thinkthat so little had been gained by saving Nick's worthless hide.Poor Nick.A sucker all along the line.Aprince of suckers.His mother had no right to turn him out of his playpen with so little preparation for thewicked wide world and its evil ways.A good guy, Nick.A nice guy.I knew I could forget Nick, but I knew I wouldn't.Somehow, he had contrived to leave an impression.Eve was different.Eve I couldn't forget even if I wanted to.She'd echoed in my mind just a little too loud.She'd echoed Lapthorn, and I could no longer think Lapthorn without knowing that there were two ofthem.Brother and sister.Man and ghost.I couldn't count the number of times my reaction-pattern toLapthorn had taken hold of my behaviour toward Eve.She might have interpreted that as an endlessseries of small cruelties.She could hardly understand.I'd never tried to explain.She could have diedhating me.And all for nothing.All for a fake relationship.I hadn't loved Eve.Not ever.But I just might Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlhave, perhaps, if it hadn't been for the Lapthorn reactions that had got into me.You did all this to me, I accused the wind.You've turned my head around.If it wasn't for you.why thehell should I feel guilty? Was it me who killed them?-No, he said.We made level time to Darlow.There was plenty of time for things to happen, but nothing did.TheSwan was in perfect shape.All the pounding she'd taken in the Leucifer system had left not a mark onher.They'd done a good job back on New Alexandria.She was her old self, in every detail.If it weremechanically and humanly possible to make the flight that Charlot had planned, then the Swan and I werefit for it.The only question mark was Johnny.Darlow was a desolate ball of impure iron whose only conceivably useful feature was its closeness to theNightingale Nebula.It was a small planet of a tired rose-colored sun.Its air wasn't poisonous but itcontained very little oxygen and life of our kind could only be supported courtesy of abundant artificialaid.The planet wasn't inhabited, in the normal sense of the word, but New Alexandria had maintained adome there for a long time, partly as an element in the vast web of New Alexandria interests whichthreaded the known galaxy, and partly for the specific purpose of observing the enigmatic Nightingale.The base never supported anything resembling a thriving community, but its population tended to be fairlystable; there were men and women who spent all their working lives there, and a handful of children hadbeen born there.Technically, therefore, it counted as one of the vast number of "human" worlds, and likeEarth or Penaflor it added no less and no more than one to the numerical total.On statistics like that thesuccess of the human race is measured.People will claim we are the galaxy's primary inhabitants becausewe "possess" more worlds than the Khor-monsa, the Gallacellans, and all the rest put together.Peopledo say it.All the time.The people who lived their lives here spent the time in between ships digging holesin the ground looking for whatever they might find or writing the great Darlovian novel.Many of them hada fierce patriotism.It had to be fierce, because there was no other way to answer the questions put to it.The transients-mostly peripatetic technical staff theoretically based on New Alexandria (though theymight never see "home" in their entire lives) were forced to acquire a shadow of the same patriotism.They couldn't live without it.The spacemen who used Darlow as a stopover or a communication pointhad to respect the idiosyncrasies of the people.You insult the honour of Darlow at your peril.Pride is adangerous thing not to have, or at least to know about, on a world like that.Somehow, I couldn't help thinking that Abram Adams- the senior man on the base and virtually theworld's dictator-was something other than human.I could see hardly anything that we held in commonexcept a shape and a language.And the Khor-monsa always speak better English than most grounders.The smaller a world the faster it gains and loses words from its pooled vocabulary.The only standardtongue in this day and age is the spacer tongue.The dome was no more than a mile across and it wasn't exactly high-density living inside.People on littleworlds like lots of personal space.New Alexandria was prepared to cater to that, uneconomic or not.Tragedies had been known to happen in domes in the early days, and still did sometimes.This meant thatwe were each assigned quarters considerably more salubrious than a starship cabin, and apparently quiteluxurious for such a poor world.My rooms included a sitting room whose north wall was a great curved Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlwindow, commanding a fine view of the bubble-city [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]