Lucius Shepard The End of Life as We Know It

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

how she knew, whether it was her gift to know these things. But the first real inkling she had of her gift
was when she noticed that the stars were shining different colors red, yellow, blue, and white and
there were pale gassy shapes pass-ing across them. Clouds, she realized. Very high clouds that she
would not ordinarily have seen. The sight frightened her, but a calm presence inside her would not admit
to fright; and this presence, she further realized, had been there all along. Just like the true colors of the
stars. It was her fearful self that was relatively new, an obscuring factor, and it like the clouds was
passing. She considered telling Richard, but decided that he would be busy deciphering his gift. She
concentrated on her own, and as they walked from the pier to the hotel, she saw halos around leaves,
gleams coursing along electrical wires, and opaque films shifting over people's faces.
They went straight up to their room and lay without talking in the dark. But the room wasn't dark for
Lisa. Pointillistic fires bloomed and faded in mid-air, seams of molten light spread along the cracks in the
wall, and once a vague human shape she identified it as a ghostly man wearing robes crossed from
the door to the window and vanished. Every piece of furniture began to glow golden around the edges,
brighter and brighter, until it seemed they each had a more ornate shape superimposed. There came to be
so much light that it disconcerted her, and though she was unafraid, she wished she could have a
moment's normalcy just to get her bearings. And her wish was granted. In a wink the room had reverted
to dim bulky shadows and a rectangle of streetlight slanting onto the floor from the window. She sat bolt
upright, astonished that it could be controlled with such ease. Richard pulled her back down beside him
and asked, "What is it?" She told him some of what she had seen, and he said, "It sounds like
hallucinations."
"No, that's not how it feels," she said. "How about you?"
"I'm not hallucinating, anyway. I feel restless, penned in, and I keep thinking that I'm going
somewhere. I mean, I have this sense of motion, of speed, and I can almost tell where I am and who's
with me. I'm full of energy; it's like I'm sixteen again or something." He paused. "And I'm having these
thoughts that ought to scare me but don't."
"What, for instance?"
"For instance" he laughed "and this really the most im-portant 'for instance', I'll be thinking about
us and I'll understand that what the old guy said about us parting is true, and I don't want to accept it. But
I can't help accepting it. I know it's true, for the best. All that. And then I'll have this feeling of motion
again. It's like. I'm sensing the shape of an event or & " He shook his head, befuddled. "Maybe they did
drug us, Lisa. We sound like a couple of acidheads out of the Sixties."
"I don't think so," she said; and then, after a silence, she asked, "Do you want to make love?"
He trailed his fingers along the curve of her stomach. "No offense, but I'm not sure I could
concentrate on it just now."
"All right. But & "
He rolled onto his side and pressed against her, his breath warm on her cheeks. "You think we might
not have another chance?"
Embarrassed, she turned her face into his chest. "I'm just horny is all."
"God, Lisa. You pick the weirdest times to get aroused."
"You've picked some pretty weird times yourself."
"I've always been absolutely correct in my behavior toward you, madam," he said in an English
accent.
"Really? What about the time in Jim and Karen's bathroom?"
"I was drunk."
"Well? I'm nervous now. You know how that affects me."
"A common glandular condition, fraulein." German accent this time. "Correctable by simple surgery."
He laughed and dropped the accent. "I wonder what Karen and Jim would be doing in our shoes."
For a while they told stories about what their various friends might do, and afterward they lay quietly,
arms around each other. Richard's heart jolted against Lisa's breast, and she thought back to the first time
they had been together this way. How protected she had felt, yet how fragile the strength of his heartbeat
had made him seem. She'd had the idea that she could reach into his chest and touch his heart. And she
could have. You had that much power over your lover; his heart was in your care, and at moments like
this it was easy to believe that you would always be caring. But the moments failed you. They were [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Podobne