| Robert Silverberg |
Роберт Силверберг |
| THE PLEASURE OF THEIR COMPANY |
Как хорошо в вашем обществе |
| He was the only man aboard the ship, one man inside a sleek shining cylinder heading away from Bradley's World at ten thousand miles a second, and yet he was far from alone. |
Он был единственным пассажиром на борту корабля, единственным человеком внутри изящного цилиндра, со скоростью десять тысяч миль в секунду удаляющегося от Мира Бредли. |
| He had wife, father, daughter, son for company, and plenty of others, Ovid and Hemingway and Plato, and Shakespeare and Goethe, Attila the Hun and Alexander the Great, a stack of fancy cubes to go with the family ones. And his old friend Juan was along, too, the man who had shared his dream, his utopian fantasy, Juan who had been with him at the beginning and almost until the end. He had a dozen fellow voyagers in all. He wouldn't be lonely, though he had three years of solitary travel ahead of him before he reached his landfall, his place of exile. |
И все же его сопровождали жена, отец, дочь, сын и другие - Овидий в Хемингуэй, Платон и Шекспир, Гете и Аттила, и Александр Великий. И старый друг Хуан, человек, который разделял его мечты, которые был с ним с самого начала и почти до самого конца. Кубики с матрицами близких и знаменитостей. |
| It was the third hour of his voyage. |
Шел третий час полета. |
| He was growing calm, now, after the frenzy of his escape. Aboard ship he had showered, changed, rested. |
Возбуждение после неистового бегства постепенно спадало, он принял душ, переоделся. |
| The sweat and grime of that wild dash through the safety tunnel were gone, now, though he wouldn't quickly shake from his mind the smell of that passageway, like rotting teeth, nor the memory of his terrifying fumbling with the security gate's copper arms as the junta's storm-troopers trotted toward him. |
Пот и грязь от дикой гонки через потайной туннель исчезли, не оставив и следа, но в памяти наверняка еще надолго сохранятся и гнилостный запах подземелья, и неподдающиеся запоры ворот, и топот штурмовиков за спиной. |
| But the gate had opened, and the ship had been there, and he had escaped, and he was safe. |
Но ворота открылись, корабль был на месте, и он спасся. |
| And he was safe. I'll try some cubes, he thought.
|
Спасся. Поставлю-ка я матрицы ... |
| The receptor slots in the control room held six cubes at once. |
Приемный паз был рассчитан одновременно на шесть кубиков. |
| He picked six at random, slipped them into place, actuated the evoker. |
Он взял первые попавшиеся, вложил их на место, включил. |
| Then he went into the ship's garden. |
Затем прошел в корабельный сад. |
| There were screens and speakers all over the ship. The air was moist and sweet in the garden. |
Экраны и динамики располагались по всему кораблю. |
| A plump, toga-clad man, clean-shaven, big-nosed, blossomed on one screen and said, |
На одном из экранов расцвел полный, чисто выбритый, крупноносый человек в тоге. |
| "What a lovely garden! |
- Ах, какой очаровательный сад! |
| How I adore plants! |
Я обожаю растения! |
| You must have a gift for making things grow. " |
У вас настоящий дар к выращиванию! |
| "Everything grows by itself. |
- Все растет само по себе. |
| You're-" |
Вы, должно быть... |
| "Publius Ovidius Naso. " |
- Публий Овидий Назон. |
