（外文电子版资料）George R. R. Martin - With Morning Comes Mistfall.pdf

VERSION 1.0 dtd 032800 GEORGE R. R. MARTIN With Morning Comes Mistfall if you could go to Loch Ness tomorrow and prove or disprove conclusively the existence of the monster, would you? Should you? When all the questions are answered, when all the superstitions are stilled, when science has unraveled all the mysteries, what will we do? Would you want to live in such a time? Would we be able to live then? I was early to breakfast that morning, the first day after landing. But Sanders was already out on the dining balcony when I got there. He was standing alone by the edge, looking out over the mountains and the mists. I walked up behind him and muttered hello. He didnt bother. to reply. Its beautiful, isnt it? he said, without turning. And it was. Only a few feet below balcony level the mists rolled, sending ghostly breakers to crash against the stones of Sanderss castle. A thick white blanket extended from horizon to horizon, cloaking everything. We could see the summit of the Red Ghost, off to the north; a barbed dagger of scarlet rock jabbing into the sky. But that was all. The other mountains were still below mist level. But we were above the mists. Sanders had built his hotel atop the tallest mountain in the chain. We were floating alone in a swirling white ocean, on a flying castle amid a sea of clouds. Castle Cloud, in fact. That was .what Sanders had named the place. It was easy to see why. Is it always like this? I asked Sanders, after drinking it all in for a while. Every mistfall, he replied, turning toward me with a wistful smile. He was a fat man, with a jovial red face. Not the sort who should smile wistfully. But he did. He gestured toward the east, where Wraithworlds sun rising above the mists made a crimson and orange spectacle of the dawn sky. The sun, he said. As it rises, the heat drives the mists back into the valleys, forces them to surrender the mounta