Glory Road

Robert A. Heinlein
Glory Road (1963)

Glory Road foi publicado pela primeira vez em The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, em 1963, e nesse mesmo ano apareceu em livro. É uma obra um tanto diferente do habitual em Heinlein, que dificilmente se pode considerar FC, apesar da nomeação para o prémio Hugo em 1964. O ambiente é mais próprio da novela fantástica, com criaturas esquisitas, lances de "magia" e pentagramas desenhados no chão — apesar de algumas personagens explicarem que aquilo é ciência para além do nosso conhecimento — sendo a narrativa passada em universos paralelos. Notoriamente, algumas ideias foram mais tarde reaproveitadas em The Number Of The Beast.
Aqui temos um protagonista, "Oscar" Gordon (Oscar não é o seu verdadeiro nome, mas o nome que ele escolhe devido a uma cicatriz — scar — que tem no rosto) que acaba o serviço na guerra do Cambodja, onde se alistou por dificuldades financeiras. O seu plano para continuar os estudos numa universidade alemã falha, e vai parar ao sul de França, onde a vida é barata. Aí conhece uma belíssima rapariga, Star, por quem se apaixona, e que o contrata para uma missão em que lhe promete aventura e riqueza. É aqui que entram os universos paralelos, pois é noutro mundo que Gordon, Star e Rufo, seu ajudante, vão em demanda do Ovo da Fénix, um objecto que é necessário recuperar, guardado na Torre de Uma Milha de Altura, num local chamado Karth-Hokesh. Antes de lá chegar é necessário ultrapassar grandes dificuldades, monstros e armadilhas, mas o objectivo é finalmente atingido.
O livro não termina aqui, como seria de esperar, e o seu último terço é, talvez, o mais interessante. Oscar e Star, que se tinham casado no decurso da aventura, vão viver para Center, o planeta de onde ela é oriunda, e desfrutar da recompensa do seu sucesso. Mas a vida faustosa e sem objectivos que Gordon encontra — ele não passa de um herói reformado — deixa-o insatisfeito, além de descobrir que toda a sua vida anterior tinha sido manipulada para o levar a aceitar aquela missão, onde dezenas de outros tinham falhado e morrido. Resolve voltar à Terra, mas também aqui não consegue retomar os estudos ou o trabalho, e acaba por se reconhecer de novo um inadaptado.

"Ready?" asked Star. "Now you two believe, too!" She scrawled with her finger in the sand. "Go!"
We went. Once in the air, I realized what a naked target we were—but we were a target on the ground, too, for anyone up on that tower, and worse if we had hoofed it. "Faster!" I yelled in Stars ear. "Make us go faster!"
We did. Air shrilled past our ears and we bucked and dipped and side-slipped as we passed over those gravitational changes Star had warned me about—and perhaps that saved us; we made an evasive target. However, if we got all of that guard party, it was possible that no one in the Tower knew we had arrived.
The ground below was gray-black desert surrounded by a mountain ringwall like a lunar crater and the Tower filled the place of a central peak. I risked another look at the sky and tried to figure it out. No sun. No stars. No black sky nor blue—light came from all over and the "sky" was ribbons and boiling shapes and shadow holes of all colors.
"What in God's name land of planet is this?" I demanded.
"It's not a planet," she yelled back. "It's a place, in a different sort of universe. It's not fit to live in."
"Somebody lives here." I indicated the Tower.
"No, no, nobody lives here. That was built just to guard the Egg."
The monstrousness of that idea didn't soak in right then. I suddenly recalled that we didn't dare eat or drink here—and started wondering how we could breathe the air if the chemistry was that poisonous. My chest felt tight and started to burn. So I asked Star and Rufo moaned. (He rated a moan or two; he hadn't thrown up. I don't think he had.)
"Oh, at least twelve hours," she said. "Forget it. No importance."
Whereupon my chest really hurt and I moaned, too.
We were dumped on top of the Tower right after that; Star barely got out "Amech!" in time to keep us from zooming past.
The top was flat, seemed to be black glass, was about two hundred yards square—and there wasn't a fiddlewinking thing to fasten a line to. I had counted on at least a ventilator stack.
The Egg of the Phoenix was about a hundred yards straight down. I had had two plans in mind if we ever reached the Tower. There were three openings (out of hundreds) which led to true paths to the Egg—and to the Never-Born, the Eater of Souls, the M.P. guarding it. One was at ground level and I never considered it. A second was a couple of hundred feet off the ground and I had given that serious thought: loose an arrow with a messenger line so that the line passed over any projection above that hole; use that to get the strong line up, then go up the line—no trick for any crack Alpinist, which I wasn't but Rufo was.
But the great Tower turned out to have no projections, real modern simplicity of design—carried too far.
The third plan was, if we could reach the top, to let ourselves down by a line to the third non-fake entrance, almost on level with the Egg. So here we were, all set—and no place to hitch.

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