Somewhere East of Life by Brian W. Aldiss

Author:Brian W. Aldiss [Aldiss, Brian W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 000654763X
Published: 2013-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

As he inhaled, Burnell came to a complete understanding of the learned doctor's position. A breathing exercise came to mind. Chuckling, he tried to teach it to Haydar. They lay prone side by side, in the corpse position under the spreading branches of the oak.

"You breathe in, counting four; hold for eight; breathe out for eight; empty for four. Then again: breathe in for four; hold for eight; breathe out for eight; still for four. Use your heartbeat to count. It'll slow as we increase the in-hold. OK, here we go: breathe in for four, not too deep; hold for twelve; breathe out for eight; empty for four. Quite still. We're building to sixteen. More twelves; breathe in for four; hold for twelve out for eight; empty for four. Again ..."

As the carbon-dioxide built in his blood, and apnoea came, he

floated upward. The figure of Haydar was a giant balloon beside him. It was immensely tranquil a meter or two above the ground. Along the branches of the oak, ginger ants toiled, as they had been toiling since the days of the dinosaurs. He realized he was wearing a bourkas, the all-enveloping cloak of the Caucasus, which greatly assisted his flight. Scarcely breathing, he and Haydar rose higher yet. The trees below were tawny with late summer, the ground was cinnamon, with lines of little white houses like sugared almonds awaiting the lick of a child.

The wind was taking them, howling like a wolf at the doors of their hearing, oddly musical, various as fever. They flew. Haydar was galloping and tumbling through the air like a black circus horse. The sky above them, a confection of barley sugar from the smoke of factories, enclosed them like amber. In them both was the glorious knowledge that blinkers had fallen from their eyes: they saw the globe as it was, in all its true beauty, pure as mountain sunlight, yet tantalizingly corrupt, filled with the good, the meek, the unmoneyed, and all who would inherit—and had already inherited, did they but dare to realize it—the world.

He found it difficult at first to disgorge himself from himself: consciousness was life's large intestine. Release was always something that had to be learned, over and over. So he clutched one corner of the great dark bourkas. The horselike person clutched another corner. With enormous uproar, exhilarating and slightly metaphysical, the magic cloak flapped and flew between them. Its independent existence—as it headed who knows where to some perhaps hidden aoul somewhere in the toothed Caucasian mountains—felt vibrant and touchingly real. Though to speak truth Bur-nell was experiencing anything real through a pair of spectacular question marks.

He said as much to the cloak, which had assumed the form of a woman, her mane of dark dark hair streaming back in the wind as if to rival nightfall. She had hold of his and the horse-person's hands. Smaragd eyes smiled from her suede face. Her magnificent breasts hung down, engine nacelles powering their flight.

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