Fantastic Stories Presents: Science Fiction Super Pack #1. Рэй Брэдбери

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СКАЧАТЬ Margot!” she echoed smiling. “Yes, so called because a poet once amused me, and because there was once a very ancient, very great French poet named François Villon, who loved a harlot called Black Margot.” She sighed. “But my poet was no Villon; already his works are nearly forgotten.”

      “A good name!” he rasped. “A good name for you!”

      “Doubtless. But you fail to understand, Hull. I’m an Immortal. My years are three times yours. Would you have me follow the standards of death-bound Vail Ormiston?”

      “Yes! By what right are you superior to all standards?”

      Her lips had ceased to smile, and her deep green eyes turned wistful. “By the right that I can act in no other way, Hull,” she said softly. A tinge of emotion quavered in her voice. “Immortality!” she whispered. “Year after year after year of sameness, tramping up and down the world on conquest! What do I care for conquest? I have no sense of destiny like Joaquin, who sees before him Empire—Empire—Empire, ever larger, ever growing. What’s Empire to me? And year by year I grow bored until fighting, killing, danger, and love are all that keep me breathing!”

      His anger had drained away. He was staring at her aghast, appalled.

      “And then they fail me!” she murmured. “When killing palls and love grows stale, what’s left? Did I say love? How can there be love for me when I know that if I love a man, it will be only to watch him age and turn wrinkled, weak, and flabby? And when I beg Joaquin for immortality for him, he flaunts before me that promise of his to Martin Sair, to grant it only to those already proved worthy. By the time a man’s worthy he’s old.” She went on tensely, “I tell you, Hull, that I’m so friendless and alone that I envy you death-bound ones! Yes, and one of these days I’ll join you!”

      He gulped. “My God!” he muttered. “Better for you if you’d stayed in your native mountains with friends, home, husband, and children.”

      “Children!” she echoed, her eyes misting with tears. “Immortals can’t have children. They’re sterile; they should be nothing but brains like Joaquin and Martin Sair, not beings with feelings—like me. Sometimes I curse Martin Sair and his hard rays. I don’t want immortality; I want life!”

      Hull found his mind in a whirl. The impossible beauty of the girl he faced, her green eyes now soft and moist and unhappy, her lips quivering, the glisten of a tear on her cheek—these things tore at him so powerfully that he scarcely knew his own allegiance. “God!” he whispered. “I’m sorry!”

      “And you, Hull—will you help me—a little?”

      “But we’re enemies—enemies!”

      “Can’t we be—something else?” A sob shook her.

      “How can we be?” he groaned.

      Suddenly some quirk to her dainty lips caught his attention. He stared incredulously into the green depths of her eyes. It was true. There was laughter there. She had been mocking him! And as she perceived his realization, her soft laughter rippled like rain on water.

      “You—devil!” he choked. “You black witch! I wish I’d let you be killed!”

      “Oh, no,” she said demurely. “Look at me, Hull.”

      The command was needless. He couldn’t take his fascinated gaze from her exquisite face.

      “Do you love me, Hull?”

      “I love Vail Ormiston,” he rasped.

      “But do you love me?”

      “I hate you!”

      “But do you love me as well?”

      He groaned. “This is bitterly unfair,” he muttered.

      She knew what he meant. He was crying out against the circumstances that had brought the Princess Margaret—the most brilliant woman of all that brilliant age, and one of the most brilliant of any age—to flash all her fascination on a simple mountainy from Ozarky. It wasn’t fair; her smile admitted it, but there was triumph there, too.

      “May I go?” he asked stonily.

      She nodded. “But you will be a little less my enemy, won’t you, Hull?”

      He rose. “Whatever harm I can do your cause,” he said, “that harm will I do. I will not be twice a traitor.” But he fancied a puzzling gleam of satisfaction in her green eyes at his words.

      TORMENT

      Hull looked down at noon over Ormiston valley, where Joaquin Smith was marching. At his side Vail paused, and together they gazed silently over Selui road, now black with riding men and rumbling wagons on their way to attack the remnant of the Confederation army in Selui. But Ormiston was not entirely abandoned, for three hundred soldiers and two hundred horsemen remained to deal with the Harriers, under Black Margot herself. It was not the policy of the Master to permit so large a rebel band to gather unopposed in conquered territory; within the Empire, despite the mutual hatred among rival cities, there existed a sort of enforced peace.

      “Our moment comes tonight,” Hull said soberly. “We’ll never have a better chance than now, with our numbers all but equal to theirs, and surprise on our side.”

      Vail nodded. “The ancient tunnel was a bold thought, Hull. The Harriers are shoring up the crumbled places. Father is with them.”

      “He shouldn’t be. The aged have no place in the field.”

      “But this is his hope, Hull. He lives for this.”

      “Small enough hope! Suppose we’re successful, Vail. What will it mean save the return of Joaquin Smith and his army? Common sense tells me this is a fool’s hunt, and if it were not for you and the chance of fairer fighting than we’ve had until now—well, I’d be tempted to concede the Master his victory.”

      “Oh, no!” cried Vail. “If our success means the end of Black Margot, isn’t that enough? Besides, you know that half the Master’s powers are the work of the witch. Enoch—poor Enoch—said so.”

      Hull winced. Enoch had been one of the three marksmen slain outside the west windows, and the girl’s words brought memory of his own part in that. But her words pricked painfully in yet another direction, for the vision of the Princess that had plagued him all night long still rose powerfully in his mind, nor could he face the mention of her death unmoved.

      But Vail read only distress for Enoch in his face. “Enoch,” she repeated softly. “He loved me in his sour way, Hull, but once I had known you, I had no thoughts for him.”

      Hull slipped his arm about her, cursing himself that he could not steal his thought away from Margaret of N’Orleans, because it was Vail he loved, and Vail he wanted to love. Whatever spell the Princess had cast about him, he knew her to be evil, ruthless, and inhumanly cold—a sorceress, a devil. But he could not blot her Satanic loveliness from his inward gaze.

      “Well,” he sighed, “let it be tonight, then. Was it four hours past sunset? Good. The Empire men should be sleeping or gaming in Tigh’s tavern by that time. It’s СКАЧАТЬ