planned it this way from the start, knowing that Sam would doublecross
him with Hale, and knowing that Sam would doublecross Hale, too. Sam
was the weak link in Hale s crusade, the one thing that might bring the
whole thing crashing if anyone suspected. Until now, Sam had been sure
no one did suspect But Zachariah Harker knew.
Good-by, Reed, the smooth voice said. Kedre, my dear
Kedre s face came back into the screen. She was still angry, but the
anger had been swallowed up in another emotion as her eyes met Sam s.
The long lashes half veiled them, and there were tears on the lashes.
Good-by, Sam, she said. Good-by. And the blue glance flickered
across his shoulder.
Sam had one moment to turn and see what was coming, but not time
enough to stop it. For Rosathe stood at his shoulder, watching the screen,
too. And as he turned her pointed fingers which had evoked music from
the harp for him this evening pinched together suddenly and evoked obli-
vion.
He felt the sweet, terrifying odor of dust stinging in his nostrils. He
stumbled forward futilely, reaching for her, meaning to break her neck.
But she floated away before him, and the whole room floated, and then
Rosathe was looking down on him from far above, and there were tears in
her eyes, too.
The fragrance of dream-dust blurred everything else. Dream-dust, the
narcotic euthanasia dust which was the way of the suicide.
His last vision was the sight of the tear-wet eyes looking down, two
women who must have loved him to evoke those tears, and who together
had worked out his ruin.
* * *
He woke. The smell of scented dust died from his nostrils. It was dark
here. He felt a wall at his shoulder, and got up stiffly, bracing himself
against it. Light showed blurrily a little way off. The end of an alley, he
thought. People were passing now and then through the dimness out
there.
The alley hurt his feet. His shoes felt queer and loose. Investigating,
Sam found that he was in rags, his bare feet pressing the pavement
through broken soles. And the fragrance of dream-dust was still a miasma
in the air around him.
Dream-dust that could put a man to sleep for a long, long while.
How long!
He stumbled toward the mouth of the alley. A passerby glanced at him
with curiosity and distaste. He reached out and collared the man.
The Colony, he said urgently. Has it have they opened it yet?
The man struck his arm away. What colony? he asked impatiently.
The Colony! The Land Colony!
Oh, that. The man laughed. You re a little late. Clearly he thought
Sam was drunk. It s been open a long time now what s left of it.
How long?
Forty years.
* * *
Sam hung on the bar of a vending machine in the wall at the alley
mouth. He had to hold the bar to keep himself upright, for his knees were
strengthless beneath him. He was looking into the dusty mirror and into
his own eyes. Forty years. Forty years! And the ageless, unchanged face
of Sam Harker looked back at him, ruddy-browed, unlined as ever.
Forty years! Sam Harker murmured to himself.
Part II
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate . . .
T. S. Eliot
The city moved past him in a slow, descending spiral. Sam Harker
looked at it blankly, taking in nothing. His brain was too filled already to
be anything just now but empty. There was too much to cope with. He
could not yet think at all. He had no recollection to span the time between
the moment when he looked into his impossibly young face in the glass,
and this current moment. Under his broken soles he felt the faint vibra-
tion of the Way, and the city was familiar that moved downward beneath
him in its slow sweep, street after street swinging into view as the spiral
Way glided on. There was nothing to catch hold of and focus, no way to
anchor his spinning brain.
I need a shot, he told himself, and even the thought came clumsily, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]