Темное, кривое зеркало. Том 5 : Средь звезд, подобно гигантам.
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"Miss Hampton. My guest will be leaving now. Ensure that he is not detained."
"Yes, sir."
"Cancel the rest of my appointments for today."
"Yes, sir."
"And.... may I take this opportunity to thank you for all you have done for me. I appreciate it, and I know I do not say this often enough."
"Sir? Is everything all right?"
"Yes. I am fine. I just need to.... think about something."
What really happens just before you die is that one single moment of your life is replayed before your eyes.
The woman was precisely one–and–a–half inches taller than him, and perhaps a year or two older. Not a great deal, but enough for a fourteen–year–old. She was wearing the uniform and the black gloves. She fiddled nervously with her badge, trying to make it sit exactly level.
"Do you think it looks all right?" she asked.
"It looks.... fine," he said, stuttering and hesitant.
She looked at him, and his throat went dry. He had known her when they were both children, but then one day she had suddenly gone away. He had learned later that she had been taken in by Psi Corps. He had written, and she had replied.
It was the first time he had seen her in five years, and she seemed to him to be the most beautiful woman in creation.
She came slowly towards him, and he tilted his head, his heart pounding so fast he thought it might burst out of his chest. Their lips touched, and he was surprised by how soft and warm they were. He was not aware of anything else at all, nothing could have distracted him from that moment.
Then he felt it.
The merest touch at the front of his mind, like a tiny breath of wind in his face. He pulled back sharply.
"What?" she asked.
And then it hit him. She was a telepath. Everything about her.... was special. She was different - and not just different. She was better. She was superior.
She had something he would never have. She was superior to him, and she knew it.
He ran.
He just wished he could remember her name.
He just wished he had been able to apologise.
"Ah, well," he breathed, or perhaps he only thought the words.
The PPG fell from William Edgars' dead hand. His eyes were closed before it hit the floor.
We are your masters and your saviours.
The words hit them at the same time as they hit everyone else on the station, but for Sinoval and Sebastian they had a far deeper meaning. Sebastian stiffened the instant he heard them, snapping to attention with the instinct of centuries.
They were his masters, and his saviours. The words were simply accepted.
For Sinoval, lying stunned and near–comatose, the words came from a long way away, from far beyond the tidal wave of pain and shock that had swept over him. Stormbringer, his blade, the weapon into which he had poured his soul, was broken.
He had fallen on the field of battle. His weapon broken, his confidence shattered, blind and deaf and mute, he was unaware that Kats had fallen too. To him, the words that sounded in his mind were the confirmation of his defeat.
He was lost.
The words continued, Sebastian still standing stiff and to attention, Sinoval still dazed and paralysed, each man accepting them for what they were, the voice of the Vorlons triumphant and powerful.
And then came the human voice - an angry voice, furious, twisted by grief and rage. It sounded so very different from the calm precision of the Vorlon. It sounded irrational, discordant, off....
It sounded individual.
It sounded real.
It sounded free.
It sounded human.
Sebastian's face contorted into a mask of rage as he heard Sheridan shouting at his master and his saviour, daring to criticise the lord of Light, daring to oppose the reasoned logic, daring even to say that the vanquished Enemy had been triumphant....
.... had been wiser!
"What is this?" Sebastian asked. The voices continued, and he grew more and more enraged. "What is this?!"
Sinoval heard his words, but they were screamed from far away, no more real, or just as real as the others.
"This is your doing!" Sebastian roared. "This is your doing!"
Sinoval did not reply.
Nor did Kats, slumped against the wall, coughing blood and bad dreams while breathing though iron mesh.
All of them heard it. All of them saw it.
<You will obey us, or you will die!>
"Then I guess I'll die."
<You do not fear death?>
"I fear a lot of things. I'm afraid I'll never get to tell Delenn how sorry I am, or how angry I am. I'm afraid you'll carry on walking blind, destroying us all without realising it.
"And I'm afraid no one will actually learn any lessons from all this. That's the greatest weakness we 'ephemeral' beings have, you see. We don't learn from the past.
"But I'm not afraid of dying, and if the choice is death or kneeling before you and kissing your shiny encounter–suited boots, then I'd rather die."
The encounter suit opened, and the blazing light poured out.
The Vorlon spoke in a chill, precise, judicial tone.
<Then die.>