（外文电子版资料）Robert Sheckley - The Never-ending Western Movie.pdf

The Never-Ending Western Movie Robert Sheckley The name is Washburn: just plain Washburn to my friends, Mister Washburn to enemies and strangers. Saying that Ive said everything, because youve seen me a thousand times, on the big screen in your neighborhood theater or on the little pay-tv screen in your living room, riding through Cholla cactus and short grass, my famous derby pulled down over my eyes, my famous Colt 44 with the 7 1/2-inch barrel strapped down to my right leg. But just now Im riding in a big air-conditioned Cadillac, sitting between my agent-manager Gordon Simms, and my wife, Consuela. Weve turned off State Highway 101 and were bouncing along a rutted dirt road which will end presently at the Wells Fargo Station that marks one of the entrances to The Set. Simms is talking rapidly and rubbing the back of my neck like I was a fighter about to enter the ring, which is more or less the situation. Consuela is quiet. Her English isnt too good yet. Shes the prettiest little thing imaginable, my wife of less than two months, a former Miss Chile, a former actress in various Gaucho dramas filmed in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. This entire scene is supposed to be off-camera. Its the part they never show you: the return of the famous gunfighter, all the way from Bel Air in the jolly jittery year of 2031 to the Old West of the mid-1900s. Simms is jabbering away about some investment he wants me to come in on, some new seabed mining operation, another of Simmss get-richer-quick schemes, because Simms is already a wealthy man, as who wouldnt be with a thirty-percent bit on my earnings throughout my ten biggest years as a star? Simms is my friend, too, but I cant think about investments now because were coming to The Set. Consuela, sitting on my right, shivers as the famous weatherbeaten