"Aldiss, Brian W - Greybeard(2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

GREYBEARD
by
Brian W. Aldiss
THE SCIENCE FICTION BOOK CLUB
by arrangement with
FABER AND FABER LTD
London 1965
With my love
to
CLIVE and WENDY
hoping that
one day they will understand
the story behind this story
й BRIAN W. ALDISS 1964
I. The River: Sparcot
Through broken reeds the creature moved. It was not alone; its mate followed, and behind her five
youngsters, joining the hunt with eagerness.
The stoats had swum a brook. Now they climbed from the chill water, up the bank and through the reeds,
bodies low to the ground, necks outstretched, the young ones in imitation of their father. Father looked out
with an impersonal hunger at rabbits frisking for food not many feet away.
This had once been wheat land. Taking advantage of a period of neglect, weeds had risen up and had their
day, choking the cereal. Later, a fire spread across the land, burning down the thistles and giant grasses.
Rabbits, which prefer low growth, had moved in, nibbling the fresh green shoots that thrust through the ash.
The shoots that survived this thinning process found themselves with plenty of space in which to grow, and
were now fair-sized young trees. The number of rabbits had consequently declined, for rabbits like open
land; so the grass had its chance to return. Now it, in its turn was being thinned beneath the continuing
spread of the beeches. The few rabbits that hopped there were thin of flank.
They were also wary. One of them saw the beady eyes watching in the rushes. It leapt for shelter and the
others followed. At once the adult stoats were covering ground, twin stretches of brown rippling across the
open space. The rabbits bolted down into their warrens. Without pause, the stoats followed. They could go
anywhere. The world - this tiny piece of the world - was theirs.
Not many miles away, under the same tattered winter sky and by the banks of the same river, the
wilderness had been cleared. In the wilderness, a pattern was still discernible; it was no longer a valid
pattern, and so it faded year by year. Large trees, to some of which a raddled leaf still clung, marked the
position of ancient hedges. They enclosed tangles of vegetation covering what had once been fields:
brambles, lacerating their way like rusty barbed wire towards the centre of the fields, and elders, and prickly
briars, as well as a sturdy growth of saplings. Along the edge of the clearing, these unruly hedges had been
used as a stockade against further growth in a wide and ragged arc, thus protecting an area of some few
hundred acres which had its longer side against the river.
This rude stockade was patrolled by an old man in a coarse shirt of orange, green, red, and yellow stripes.
The shirt furnished almost the only splash of colour in the entire bedraggled landscape; it had been made
from the canvas of a deckchair.
At intervals, the barrier of vegetation was broken by paths trodden into the undergrowth. The paths were
brief and ended in crude latrines, where holes had been dug and covered with tarpaulins or wooden battens.
These were the sanitary arrangements of the village of Sparcot.
The village itself lay on the river in the middle of its clearing. It had been built, or rather it had
accumulated in the course of centuries, in the shape of an H, with the cross bar leading to a stone bridge
spanning the river. The bridge still spanned the river, but led only to a thicket from which the villagers
gathered much of their firewood.
Of the two longer roads, the one nearest the river had been intended to serve only the needs of the village.