《The Plastic Abyss》作者： - Kate Wilhelm【EPUB】

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The Plastic Abyss by Kate Wilhelm A 1971 Nebula Award Nominee DOROTHY PAUSED AT THE DOOR TO THE LIVING ROOM and listened for a moment. Her husband was talking, his voice insistent, not raised, never, ever raised, but inescapable. She deliberately didn't hear the words, listened instead to the tone, the quality of his voice that now made his words sound so much more meaningful than they had been when he had practiced on her in halting phrases, stumbling over his ideas, garbling them. She was the yellow pulp paper on which he tried out his first draft; the guests who listened soberly were fine, smooth, twenty-pound bond. She turned from the door, to go back to the patio where she had retreated several minutes earlier. No one expected her to rejoin them that night, although no one would object if she did; they all liked Gary's pretty, young wife. She sat down and looked past the pool out over the sand to the ocean shimmering under a gibbous moon. After a few moments she knew that she couldn't sit still any longer and she walked outside, kicked off her sandals, and went down to the hard sand of the high-tide mark and watched the play of waves. The sand felt cool to her bare feet, the wind cool on her cheeks. She wished that she had stopped to put on her bathing suit, or shorts; the wind was whipping her skirt about her legs. The light from the moon caught on the advancing front of the waves, creating gleaming yellow and black walls. The waves broke and the light shattered into thousands, millions of pieces, fractured, lost. And new walls formed. Farther out there was a broad undulating avenue of gold that stretched forever. The walls advanced, broke, shattered. She started to stroll along the edge of the water. The golden avenue moved with her, inviting