Echo #02 30 ноября 1996

Самиздат

Fantasy - A fantastic story of Ray Bradbury "Ice and Flame" (Part 1).

 In this newspaper we offer
the attention of the first part of a fantastic story of Ray 
Bradbury's "Ice and Flame." Text Paul scored FROM REAL SOFTWARE 
/ NHG. Happy reading! 



               Ice and Flame.


                 Story


               Ray Bradbury


                 - 1 -
 Sim was born at night. He lay whimpering on the
cold stones in the cave. The blood of jerks
ran over him a thousand times a minute.
He grew up in her eyes.

 The mother frantically thrust a meal in your mouth.
A nightmare called life began. Immediately
after childbirth and his eyes filled with anxiety, which was 
replaced by irrational, but because no less strong, everlasting 
fear. He choked on food and burst into tears. Looking around

around, he saw nothing.

 Everything was drowned in a thick haze. Gradually she
melted. Stood out the outlines of the cave.
Emerged a man with a kind of crazy, wild,
horrible. A man with a dying person. Old, dried up by the 
winds, burned by the heat, like a brick. Cowering in the corner

caves, sparkling whites oblique eyes, he
listened to the distant howling of the wind
constrained chill night planet.

 Without taking his eyes off the men, who were constantly 
twitching, his mother nursed her son Shem stone fruit, grass 
rock collected from failures icicles. He ate, singled out, again

ate and continued to grow more and more.

 The man in the corner of the cave was his father! Iso
the whole face but his eyes were still living. In the withered 
hand, he had a rough stone ax, his mandible blunt, feebly 
dropped. 

 All the more penetrating gaze, he saw Sim
old men who sat in the past in
deep mountain tunnel. In his eyes they
began to die.

 The cave was filled with dying cries.
Elderly melted like wax figures,
sunken cheeks are covered with sharp cheekbones, stripping 
bared teeth. Just Their faces were alive, fluid, smooth,

as happens in adulthood. And now
flesh dries, perish.

 Sim rushed about on his mother's arms. She
firmly gripped him.

 - Well, well - she tried to persuade him quietly,
anxiously, glancing at his father - is not disturbed if the 
noise. 

 Quickly splashed on the stone bare feet
Seema's father ran across the cave. Seema's mother
screamed. Sim felt like it ripped from her hands. He fell on 
the rocks and rolled shrieking, straining their brand-new Wet 
lungs! 

 Above it suddenly appeared excised wrinkled face and his 
father entered to strike a knife. Just like in one of those 
nightmares that haunted him still in the womb. A few blinding, 
intolerable seconds in the brain Sima flashed questions. Knife 
hung in the air, ready to just about ruin. And in a brand new 
Sim Golovenko the ninth shaft stirred the idea of ​​living in 
This cave, the dying people, about wilting and madness. How 
could he comprehend? None. There's something wrong! It is 
impossible. But here is this happening to him. Passed

just an hour, he started
live. And the next moment might die!

 The mother threw herself on the back of his father and pushed
in the direction of the hand with a gun. Until Shem came
an echo of the terrible emotional collision of
two conflicting minds.

 - Just let me kill him! - Shouted the father, breathing
intermittently hoarse. - Why did he live?

 - No, no! - Kept telling his mother, and the frail
her old body hung baggy on his back
father, with his hands sililis take his knife. -
Let him live! Maybe his life will girlfriend! Maybe he will live
longer than ours and will stay young!

 The father fell on his back beside the stone basket.
Lying next to him and looking shiny
eyes, Sim saw in the cradle someone figure. A little girl 
quietly eating, lifting food to his mouth a thin handle. His 
sister. 

 The mother snatched the knife from tightly clenched
husband's fingers and stood up, sobbing and stroking
vsklochennye their gray hair. Her lips twitched.

 - I'll kill you! - She said, angrily looking down
at her husband. - Do not touch my children.

 The old man listlessly, wearily and indifferently spat
looked at the girl to rock his cradle.

 - One-eighth of her life has already passed -
he said, breathing heavily. - And it is about
This does not even know. Why all this?

 In the eyes of his mother, Sima began as if
transformed and become like a crumpled
wind puff of smoke. Thin bony face
dissolved in a maze of wrinkles. Threw himself with flour, she 
sat beside him, shaking and pressed a knife to his withered 
breasts. As and old men in the tunnel, it is also trying to

Death occurs on it.

 Sim persistently crying. Wherever you look, it
on all sides surrounded by terror. Thoughts Sima
experienced counter-current still someone's mind. He 
instinctively looked at the stone cradle. And stumbled upon a 
sight of his sister, Duck. Two of the mind come into contact, 
though fumbling fingers. Sim allowed himself to relax. His mind 
began to comprehend. 

 The father sighed, closed his eyelids green
eyes.

 - Feed a baby - in exhaustion said
he said. - Hurry up. Soon the dawn, and today
last day of our life, woman. Qormi
him. Let it grow.

 Sim quieted down, and through the veil of fear in his
consciousness began to leak pictures.

 This planet, where he was born, was
first from the sun. Night on it was burned by frost, the days 
were like flames. Wild, frenetic world. People lived in the 
bowels of the mountain to escape the unimaginable cold, and 
fire-breathing days. Only at dawn and at sunset air caressed 
the lungs breathing flowers, and this time of cave people 
endured their children will, in the bare rocky

valley. At dawn, the ice melted, turning into
streams and rivers at sunset flame cooled
and died. And while kept reasonable, tolerant, temperature, 
people in a hurry to live, ran, played, loved, having escaped 
from the cave prison. All life on the planet suddenly 
blossomed. Rapidly stretched up Plants in the sky thrown stones 
were carried by birds. Small four-legged frantically scurrying 
among the rocks: all sought to coincide with his life term in 
this transient pore.


 Unbearable planet. Sim got it in the first hours after his 
birth, when It began a hereditary memory. All

his life will be held in the caves, and only two
hours a day he will see will. In these
napolnennuh air stone beds it
will talk and talk with people of their
tribe, without a break for sleep, will think, think, will be 
dreaming of lying on his back, but do not sleep. 

 And his whole life will last exactly eight
days.

 What a cruel thought! Eight days. Eight
short days. Incredibly, it is impossible, but
this is so. Still in the womb far
strange voice said Sima hereditary memory, it is rapidly formed,
develops quickly and is born.

 The birth of an instant, like a knife stroke.
Childhood flies headlong. Young people -
like heat lightning. Maturity - a dream, maturity
- Myth, old age - a severe swift
reality, the inevitability of death emergency.
 Will be held eight days, and it will be here a half-blind, 
decrepit, dying, like his father, who is now so depressed 
looking at his wife and children. 

 This day - one-eighth of its entire
life! It is necessary to properly use each
second. We must learn the knowledge embodied in
brain parents.

 Because after a few hours they will be dead.

 What a terrible injustice. Is
life is so fleeting? Or not dreamed it
in the prenatal being a long life, not
submitted with heated stones
waves of green leaves and a mild climate? But
once he saw all this, then the basis for
dreams to be true? How can he look
and gain a long life? Where? How to perform
such a huge and difficult task in eight
short, fleeting days?

 And how his tribe found itself in such conditions?

 Suddenly, as if pressed a button in
his mind there was a picture. Metallichiskie
seeds brought by wind from space
distant green planet, struggling with long
tongues of fire falling on the surface of this dreary world ... 
From the broken shells selected men and women ... 

 When? .. Long time. Ten thousand days ago.
The survivors took shelter from the sun
bowels of the mountains. Flame, ice and storm wiped out
traces of the huge metal seeds. And people
as if were on the anvil under the mighty
Hammer, who took them to transform.
Solar radiation permeated their flesh.
Pulse participation - two hundred, five hundred, a thousand
beats per minute! Skin became thicker, changed blood. Old age 
is approaching with lightning speed. Children born in the 
caves. Cycle of life is continuously accelerating. And people 
stranded after an accident on an alien planet, lived like all 
the local animal only one week, and their children were

condemned to the same destiny.

 "So what is life" - thought Sim. He did not say to himself, 
because he does not yet know the words, thinks in images, 
memories from the distant past, so it was arranged his mind, 
endowed with its kind of telepathy, penetrating through the 
flesh, and stone and metal. At some stage

new development in his tribe came gift
telepathy and formed a hereditary
memory - only the good, the only
hope in this realm of terror. "So, - thinking Sim - I - five 
thousandth of a long series worthless sons? What can I do

to me after eight days is not overtaken
death? Is there any way out? "

 His eyes widened: in the mind, a new picture.

 Beyond this valley, with its jumble of rocks,
on a small hill lies a whole, unscathed
metallic seed - the ship is not touched
no rust, no collapses. Abandoned ship, only with all his fleet, 
which is not broke, not broken, he still been suitable for the 
flight. But to him so far away ... And no one inside who could 
help. Even so, the ship on a distant hill will be his 
destination. After all, once it could save him.


 A new picture ...

 Deep in the bowels of the mountain in solitude
operates a handful of scientists. They must
go when he grows up and typed the mind. Their
thought too obsessed with the dream of salvation -
dream of a long life, green valleys
without heat and cold. They, too, languishing hope, look at the 
distant ship on the mountain, in the amazing metal, which is 
not terrible no corrosion, no time.


 Rocks muffled moan.

 The father of Shem lifted excised wrinkles lifeless face.

 - Day is breaking - he said.


                 - 2 -
 Morning mighty muscles relaxed granite
column. The hour of landslides.

 Echoes tunnels caught the sound of running bare feet. Adults 
with impatient hungry eyes in a hurry outside where

worked per day. Sim heard in the distance a dull
roar ... Then cry, replaced by silence.
In the valley, is overthrown by avalanches. Overhanging
rocks millions of years awaited the hour,
frustrated with the place, and if the path down the
slope began a huge boulder, then
the valley floor were scattered thousands of pieces and
heated by friction kartechin.

 Every morning, stone shower blew in
At least one victim.

 Rock tribe challenged collapses.
Duel with the elements to make an even sharpness in
their already dangerous, violent and transient life.

 Sim felt the hand of his father sharply
lift it and carry on the tunnel for a thousand
yards - the place from which the light leaks.
Father's eyes blazed with madness. Sim could not move. He 
guessed that now happen. Carrying in her arms a little Duck,

his father hurried to his mother.

 - Wait! Beware! - She screamed to her husband.

 High on the hill suddenly into something, stronulos.

 - Come on! - His father growled and jumped out.

 On top of them hit rock falls.

 With increasing speed alternated in the head Sima perception - 
the crumbling masses, dust, shock ... Shrill cry mother! They 
rocked, shaking. 

 One more step and they are outdoors.
Behind them, continued to rumble. Y
entrance to the cave where his mother was buried and
Duck, rose a pile of rubble, among them were two blocks, one 
hundred pounds each. 

 The roar of the avalanche came to rustling streams
sand. The father of Shem burst out laughing.

 - Slipped! By the sky! Slipped
alive!

 He looked disdainfully at rocks and spat.

 - Phew!
 The mother got out through the debris out with the Duck and 
began to scold her father: 

 - FOUL! You could kill a Sim!

 - Still not too late - he snapped.

 Sim did not listen to them squabble. He watched
if spellbound, the wreckage piled
entrance into the next cave. There, from under the piles
stone, soaking into the ground, ran a trickle
blood. And yet, nothing more can be seen ...
Someone has lost the fight.

 Duck ran forward compliant, flimsy legs - naked and purposeful.

 The air in the valley was like a wine filtered through the 
mountains. Sky - defiantly blue; at noon it become hot hot, at 
night - vspuhnet purple-black bruise with pockmarks painful 
mertsayuschih stars.


 Sima world resembled the bay with the tides and
tides. Temperature wave is nahlynet
in frenetic bursts, then shlynet. Now
Bay was calm, cool, and all living things
aspired to the surface.

 Laughter! Sounds in the distance ...
But how? Can someone from the tribe
can be a laughing matter? I'll have to then try to figure out 
what was wrong. 

 Suddenly, in the valley zaburlili paint. Aroused fierce glow 
of dawn in the most unlikely of places were looking plants. 
Directly in front of flowers bloom. Here on the bare rock 
crawling pale green thread. And after a few seconds between the 
leaves have already tossed ripe fruit. Passing Sima mother, the 
father began to collect ephemeral crop. Scarlet, blue, yellow

fruits fall into hanging on his belt
fur bag. Mother chewed a young, succulent
greens, shoved it in her mouth Sim.

 His perceptions were sharpened to the utmost.
He eagerly absorbed the knowledge. Love, marriage,
manners, anger, pity, anger, selfishness, shades and 
subtleties, reality and reflection - he is on the move 
comprehend these concepts. One led up to the next. Type of 
waving green plants so affected by Sima that his mind was 
thrown into confusion and began to whirl, like a gyro, seeking 
balance in a world where the lack of time forced,

not waiting for explanations, the most explored and 
interpreted. Food, spreading through the body, helped him to 
understand their own structure and in such things as energy and 
movement. Like a chick hatched of eggs, Sim was an almost 
complete system is fully developed and Armed with the 
knowledge. He was indebted to heredity and the finished image, 
telepathically transmitted to each reason, every breath. 
Amazing, inspiring property! 

 Together - mother, father and two children - they
walked Obono smells, watching the birds with
speed stone's throw streak over
valley, and suddenly the father said:

 - Do you remember?

 Like this - "do you remember? Sim lay Kalachik
in his arms. Do all you can forget
something for those seven days that they lived!

 Husband and wife exchanged a glance.

 - Really it was just three days ago? -
She shuddered and closed her eyes, concentrating. - I can not 
believe. Oh, how unfair ..


 She sobbed, and then held his hand over his face and bit his 
lip caked. The wind tugged at her white hair. 

 - It's my turn to cry. An hour ago
you cry!

 - Hour ... half life.

 - Come on. - She pulled her husband's hand. -
Come on, check all because no longer need.

 - A few minutes later the sun rises -
replied the old man. - It's time to return.

 - It's only a minute, - pleaded females.

 - Sun zastignet us.

 - Well, let me zastignet!

 - What are you talking about!

 - I do not say nothing, - the woman sobbing.

 That's it had to appear sun.
Greens in the valley early dry up. Born
scorching wind. In the distance, where the rock
bastions have fallen solar boom
distorting the features of the mighty stone quantities, 
frustrated by an avalanche - though fell in the mantle. 

 - Duck! - Called father.

 The girl responded and ran hot on the boards of the valley, 
and her hair waving like a black flag. With a handful of green 
fruit, she joined the their own.


 Sun flames trimmed edge of the sky,
air stirred, and filled with the whistles.

 People peshernogo tribe appealed to the
flight, on the go shouting and picking up children stumbled, 
taking in its deepest burrows handfuls of greens and fruits. In 
a few Moments of the valley was empty, except for

Forgotten someone baby. He ran over the smooth boards, but he 
had very little silenok, run remained the same, and down the 
slopes had already tumbled into a mighty hot shaft.


 Flowers burned, turning to ashes; grass
drawn into the cracks, as if scalded
snakes. The wind, like a breath blast furnaces, pick up a 
flower seeds, and they fell in cracks and crevices, to the 
sunset again grow and give flowers and seeds and then dry up.


 The father of Shem looked like the bottom of the valley runs 
away lonely child. He himself, his wife, Duck and Shem were 
safely hidden in the mouth of the cave. 

 - Do not run so far - his father said. - Do not look
there, mother. Such things are better not seen.

 And they turned away. All but Sim. He noticed in the distance 
a metallic sheen. Heart were beating in his chest, in the eyes

all blurred. Far away, at the very
atop a small hill exuded blinding
flashing metal seed. As if filled with one of the dreams of the 
days when the Sim has lay in the womb! There, on a hill, the 
whole, unscathed - metal grain from outer space! His future! 
His hope for salvation! That's where he went through

two or three days, when - it's hard to imagine - will be an 
adult man. 

 If the flow of molten lava, sun
poured into the valley.

 Running the child cried out, the sun caught up with him, and 
cry broke. 

 With difficulty dragging his feet, somehow suddenly postarev 
mother Sima went through the tunnel. Stopped ... Stretched her 
arms up and broke some two icicles, the last of namerzshih for

night. One gave her husband, another left
themselves.

 - Let's drink a toast to the last. For you, for the children.

 - For you. - He nodded at her. -
For children.

 They raised the icicles. Heat melted
ice, and drops to refresh their parched mouths.


                 - 3 -
 Red-hot sun all day crashes down into the valley. Sim did not 
see it, but on power fluorescent flame, he is well able to judge

the bright pictures in the minds of parents.
Viscous as mercury, the light seeps into the cave, burning 
everything in its path, but not deeply penetrated. From him in 
the voids was light and disperse a pleasant warmth.


 Sim tried to fight off the advancing age of parents, but no 
matter how strained intelligence, calling in to help the images 
on His eyes are turned into mummies.

Ate aging father, like acid.
"Soon bude me the same thing" - in terror
thought Sim.

 He grew up headlong, literally feeling
as occurs in the body metabolism.
Every minute, fed him, he is without end
something to chew on, something to swallow. Images
processes have begun to communicate in his mind with
determining their words. One such
word was "love." For Sima therein wing
not an abstract concept, but a process,
easy breath, the smell of morning freshness,
heart palpitations, mild hand bend, on which he lay, stooped 
over his mother's face. At first he saw this or that action, 
then in the minds of mothers searching for and finding the 
right word. The larynx was preparing for speeches. Life is 
fast, relentlessly fascinated to meet the eternal oblivion.


 Sim felt grow his fingernails, as
developing cells, grow hair, increase in size of bone and 
tendon, grows soft, pale, waxy substance of the brain. At 
birth, clean and smooth, like a circle of ice, has a second 
later his brain like the blow of stone, covered

netting millions of sulci and gyri, indicating the thoughts and 
discoveries. 

 His sister, Duck is invoked, then ran away with the other 
children and Conservatory nonstop something upisyvala. Mother

trembled over them, she ate nothing, she
had no appetite, and his eyes seemed to interweave
web.

 - Sunset - finally said my father.

 Day was over. It was getting dark, he heard
howling wind.

 The mother got up.

 - I want to once again see the outside world ...
Only time ...

 Shaking, she rushed forward unseeing
look.

 Father's eyes were closed, he lay down beside
wall.

 - I can not stand up - barely audible whisper
he said. - I can not.

 - Duck! - Croaked the mother and daughter ran to her. Take it.

 She gave her daughter Seema.

 - Take care of Shem, Duck, feed him, take care of
it.

 Last maternal affectionate touch hands ...

 Duck silently pressed Sima to itself, its great
wet green eyes sparkled.

 - Go, - his mother said. - Remove it to
will in the hour of sunset. Have fun. Collect
eat, eat. Play.

 Do not look back, Duck came to the door. Sim twisted her arms, 
looking Sisters shocked over his shoulder, neveryaschimi eyes. 
He pulled out a cry, and her lips somehow formed, giving exit

first in his life the way:

 - Why? ..

 He saw how his mother was taken aback.

 - The child began to speak!

 - Aha, - said my father. - Do you hear,
what he said?

 - Hear - his mother said softly.

 Staggering, she slowly dobrela to his father and
lay down beside him. Last Sim saw his parents move.


                 - 4 -
 Night came and passed, and started the second
day.

 All the dead night carried to the top
small hill. The funeral procession was
long: a lot of bodies.

 Duck came along with all leading hand waddling something like 
Sima. He learned to walk for an hour before dawn. 

 From the hill again saw Sim away the metal grain. But nobody 
else there will not watched and none of it did not. Why?

Maybe there's a reason? May
be it a mirage? Why are not they running there?
Do not pray for this grain? Why not try to get to it and fly 
into space? 

 Funeral speech died away. Body was put in
number in the open, where the sun through
few minutes of their cremated.

 Then all turned back and rushed
down the slope, slowly use a few minute of freedom - to run, 
play, laugh on the air smelling fresh.


 Duck and Sim, chirping, like a bird, hunted
their food among the rocks and they shared their
another that had time to learn. He was
second day, she was - the third. Both whipped rapid pace of 
their transient lives. 

 Now she turned to him one more
face.

 From the rocks overhead, holding in his clenched fist stones 
and stone knives, slipped half a hundred young men. With cries 
they rushed to the low ridge of black rock teeth in the 
distance. 

 "War!" - Give the brain Sim. New
thought it stunned, shocked. These people have fled fighting 
and killing other people, that live there, among the black 
rocks. 

 But why? Why fight and kill, -
Is not life already not too short?

 From the distant hum of the bout he was not
themselves.

 - Why, Duck, why?

 Duck does not know. Maybe they will understand
tomorrow. Now we have to have - is to maintain the strength and 
life. Duck reminded yascherichku, always something groping her 
a pink tongue, always hungry. 

 All around everywhere scurried pale kids.
One boy darted like a bug, Up
the hill, knocked down and Sima front
He grabbed his nose especially seductive red berry, which he 
found under the tab.


 Before Sim had to get up, boy
have to cope with the booty. Sim attacked
him, they both fell and rolled down
weird lumps, until Duck, screaming, not
separate them.

 In Sima bleeding from abrasions. Kakayato part of his mind, 
looking as though with hand, was saying. "It does not fit. 
Children should not do so. This is bad! "


 Duck spanking chased the little thief.

 - Get out of here! - She cried. - What's your name, roughneck?

 - Kayon! - Laughing, replied the boy. -
Kayon, Kayon, Kayon!

 Sim looked at him with all the ferocity
which could express it a little young
face. He gasped. Before him was the enemy.
As if the Sim has long been waiting to start a hostile embodied 
not only in the environment, but also in some kind of man. His 
mind had already suffered a landslide, heat, cold, the 
transience of life, but it was associated with the medium, with 
the outside world - violent manifestations of the unconscious 
inanimate nature, generated by gravity and radiation. And here, 
in the face of this brazen Kayona, thinking he knew the enemy!


 Ran to the side, stopped and Kayon
sarcastically shouted:

 - Tomorrow I'll be so big that I can
kill you!

 With these words he disappeared behind a rock.

 Past Sim, giggling children ran. Who among
They become his friend, who - the enemy? And how
even for such a horrible short life term may have friends and 
enemies? Would there have time to buy one or the other?


 Duck, reading thought his brother, led him on. Continuing the 
search for food, she frantically whispering in his ear:


 - Stole your food - that's the enemy. Presented a long stem - 
that's different. Still feuding because thoughts and opinions. 
In five seconds You amassed a mortal enemy. Life

so short that this must hurry.

 And she laughed with a strange for such a
Young being ironic, reflecting the premature maturity of 
thought. 

 - You will have to fight to protect
themselves. You will try to kill him. There is a belief, 
foolish to believe that part of the life energy goes to the 
slain murderer, and due to this you can live another day.

Got it? And as long as someone believes it, you're in
danger.

 But Sim did not hear her. Flocks of fragile
little girls, who tomorrow will become higher and
still, the day after tomorrow will draw, and after another day 
find a husband, separated rezvushka with hair the color of 
violet-blue flame.


 As he ran by, she touched Sima, their bodies
touched. Gleaming eyes, blond
as silver coins. And he already knew that
found another love, his wife, who through
week will lie down beside him on the funeral pyre, when the sun 
would start sluschivat their flesh to the bones. 

 Just one look, but he made an instant
okamenet them.

 - What's your name? - Sim shouted after him.

 - Light! - Laughing, "she said.

 - And I - Sim - said he was embarrassed,
confusion.

 - Sim! - She said, rushing forward. - I'll remember.

 Duck pushed him in the ribs.

 - Here, eat, - she said zadumavshemusyaya brother. - Eat, do 
not do not grow up and not be able to catch up with her.


 Out of nowhere came running Kayon.

 - Light! - He mimicked, dancing mischievously. - Light! I also 
remember Light! 

 Tall, slim as a twig, Duck
sadly shook her black cloud of hair.

 - I can tell you beforehand what you
waiting for baby brother. You will soon need a weapon to fight 
for this Light. But we time, the sun is about to come out!


 And they ran back to the cave.


                        To be continued ...


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