[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.If I remember rightly, you use two spoons of sugar.”“That is right,” she said.“Two spoons.”“Would you wish a cup as well?” Jurgens asked Lansing.“If you please,” said Lansing.They sat together beside the fire with Jurgens crouched to one side.The wood Jurgens had piled on the fire was catching and the flames leaped high.They sipped their tea in silence.Then she said, “I am not one of your flighty females.You know that.”Lansing nodded.“Yes, indeed, I know.You can be as tough as nails.”“I woke up,” she said.“A nice, easy waking up.Not jerked out of sleep.I was lying on my back so that when I woke, I was looking straight up at the sky.”She had another sip of tea and waited, as if trying to steel herself to go on with what she had to say.She set the cup on the ground and turned to face Lansing.“They were three,” she said, “the three of them—or I think there were three of them.There could have been four.Three faces.No other parts of their body.Just faces.Big faces.Bigger than human faces, although I am sure they were human.They looked human.Three big faces in the sky, filling half the sky, looking down at me.And I thought how silly to think that I am seeing faces.I blinked my eyes, thinking it was my imagination and they would go away.But they didn’t go away.After I had blinked I could see them even better.”“Easy,” said Lansing.“Take your time.”“I am easy, dammit, and I am taking my time.You’re thinking hallucination, aren’t you?”“No, I’m not,” he said.“You saw them if you say you saw them.Hard as nails, remember?”Jurgens hunched forward and refilled the cups.“Thank you, Jurgens,” she said.“You make splendid tea.”Then she said, “There was nothing wrong with the faces.Nothing outrageous.Quite ordinary, now that I think of it.One of them had a beard.He was the young one, the other two were old.Nothing wrong with them, I said—not to start with.Then it began to seep into me.They were looking intently at me.Interested.The way one of us would be interested if we came across an odious insect, an abominable creature of some sort, a new sort of life.As if I weren’t a creature; as if I were a thing.There was, to start, what I thought might be a look of compassion for me, then I saw it wasn’t—it was, rather, a mingled contempt and pity and it was the pity that hurt the most.I could almost read their thoughts.My God, they were thinking, will you look at that! And then—and then…”Lansing said nothing; he sensed that it was the time to say nothing.“And then they turned their heads away.They didn’t go away.They only turned their heads away, dismissing me.As if I were beneath their notice, beneath contempt, unworthy of their pity.As if I were nothing—and, by extension, the human race was nothing.Condemning all of us to nothingness, although condemn may be too strong a word.We were not even worth their condemnation.We were a lowly form of which they would think no further.”Lansing let out his breath.“For the love of God,” he said, “no wonder…”“That is right.No wonder.It hit me hard.Edward, maybe my reaction—”“Let’s not talk about reactions.My reaction probably would have been as bad or worse.”“What do you think they were? Not who, but what?”“I wouldn’t know.Right now I wouldn’t even guess.”“It was not my imagination.”“You have no imagination,” he said.“You’re a hard-headed engineer.All nuts and bolts.A realist.Two and two are four, never three or five.”“Thank you,” she said.“Later on,” he said, “we’ll spend hours wondering what they were, but not now.You’re still too close to it.Later on.”“Another person,” she said, “might have told you they were gods.Sandra would have told you that.A primitive would tell you that.The Parson would denounce them as devils thirsting for his soul.I’ll tell you this much—they had the arrogance, the noncaring, the self-assurance of gods, but they weren’t gods.”“Once we robots thought that humans were gods,” said Jurgens.“After all, perhaps in a sense they were.You can understand why we might have thought so, for they created us.But we got over it.After a time we saw they were no more than a different life form.”“There is no need to comfort me,” said Mary.“I’ve told you I know they aren’t gods.I’m not sure there are any gods
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]