"Baker,_Kage_-_The_Fourth_Branch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

"What is that?" How groggy I sounded.
"I seem to be paralyzed."
I felt sick. "Your neck's broken, then. I'm sorry, man."
"No, it can't break, but -- " He paused a moment and then spoke rapidly. "Eogan, I'd like to make a confession. Will you hear it? Will you be my _anmchara_?"
"But you're a pagan!"
"I'll convert. Will you? If I ask you in Christ's name?" His voice was desperate.
And of course I must say Yes, and so I was bound to his secret. I leaned close in the darkness to hear Lewis as he drew a deep breath and confessed:
"You see ... I'm afraid I'm rather more of a pagan than you thought. In fact, I'm not strictly what you'd call a human being."
"What are you, then?" I sat back to stare at him. His eyes were dark with terror and he was certainly sweating like a mortal man.
"The word _cyborg_ won't mean anything to you. You'd call me a homunculus, I suppose, grown from a mortal infant but changed with clever machinery. The masters who created me live nearly two thousand years in the future, Eogan. I work for them here in the past, finding things they want and hiding them in places that won't be disturbed until their own era. I've been functioning for four centuries now." He swallowed hard and seemed to get his panic under control. "They made me immortal and indestructible; at least they thought so. They know everything -- well, not quite everything, or I wouldn't be lying here now, would I? My God, I _can't_ die! Can I?" He gave a laugh that caught on a sob. I reached for his hand and squeezed it. It felt mortal.
"I don't know what on earth you're talking about," I told him, trying even now to hold tight to my orderly rational world. "But I've seen men fall and lose movement down one side of themselves, or lose the power of speech. I think that's happened to you, Lewis. I'm sorry."
"Actually I suppose it _is _something like that. When we stepped on that grid -- obviously it was a trap, and I suspect it was designed for my kind -- it damaged me. Only my head is working, and I think that's because of an emergency backup system. I don't know how much longer before that system breaks down too. I can't seem to reset myself! Listen, Eogan! Will you swear to me to fulfill a duty? As my confessor, Eogan!"
"Of course," I assured him. As his anmchara I had that obligation, though I'd barely understood what he'd said. I understand well enough now, to my grief.
"Go back now!" Lewis begged me. "Go back and seal the _Codex Druidae _in lead, and bury it ten feet below the floor of your scriptorium! You'll find the lead casket with my things in the guest house. Please, Eogan!"
"Why is this so important?" I felt his forehead. He wasn't feverish; cold in fact. He had to be raving, though.
"Because it'll be worth an awful lot of money to the Neo-Wiccans when it's dug up in 2350!" he replied.
I had not the slightest idea what he meant by that at all, nor was I ever to get him to explain further, for his eyes went wide suddenly and he gasped. "Good God! Look at that!"
This last was not a timely prayer but a reaction to the creatures who were suddenly there with us in that dark hall, things like horrible children. Small, with skins pale as ashes, and tiny weak faces set low on big heads. They were naked, save for goggles of black glass worn over eyes that were probably as weak as the rest of them. No genitals at all. I wanted to yell with revulsion at the sight of them; but a voice like the devil spoke within my ear, wheedling, coaxing, imploring.
_Please, _it begged me, _pleease! Rise and bring the mechanism with you. Pleeease go with us. We're going somewhere nice. You'll want to come. _And though I detested the little voice before and after I heard it, while it twittered away at me I could no more deny it than a call of nature. I prayed to my sunlit Christ to deny them power over me; still I obeyed them, got to my feet and picked up Lewis. His head hung down like a broken doll's and I was certain I'd killed him; but as I moved to follow the pale children, I heard him murmuring inexplicably: "_Mass hysteria_, was it? _Faked photographs_, was it?" in tones of indignation.
Down the long hall we went, dark and warm, reeking with strange animal smells. We came to a door, neatly made, and the pale children bid me put my shoulder against it and push my way in. I shoved through into a tiny stone chamber, lit by white glass beyond the door ("Watch out! Careful of my head!" fretted Lewis as it nearly knocked on the jamb). Then we were in and the door had swung shut after us, and I saw that there was no handle on the inside, and the silky voices had stopped, and I felt like a fool in a trap, which I was.
Behind me I heard a hiss of indrawn breath.
"Guests," mused a voice in Latin. "How fortunate I am."
"Eogan, turn around!" cried Lewis, in tones of distinct alarm.
I whirled about expecting a dragon, at least, but saw instead a pale child in chains, sitting against the wall.
No, not a child. On his big head were wisps of hair, and a thin wispy beard trailed from his chin; his gender was evident, if small as a baby's. He had a nose, too, and a bitter thin mouth, and wide pale eyes that were fixed on us with an expression of malevolent amusement.
"Slave," he told me, "bring the machine-man here. I'd like a look at him."
"Slave yourself," I replied, though I'd felt the strongest compulsion to do as he'd bid me. I retreated to the opposite side of the room and set Lewis down carefully. He was staring as if fascinated at the prisoner.
"What on Earth are you?" he inquired.
"And what are you?" mocked the other. "But, you see, I know the answer to that question. We know all about you and you know nothing about us. You passed through the Disruption Field, clearly."
"Was that what it was?" Lewis' head lolled sideways. "Eogan, hold me up so I can see him!" I obliged while the prisoner giggled at us.
"Yes, and it works well, apparently! Mother will be so happy. My Uncles will learn a lot from you, when they open up that ticking head of yours. Though of course we'll all have to move now. We'll have learned enough to improve our defenses next time, at least!" The creature smiled nastily. Real fear showed in Lewis' eyes.
"What are you?" I demanded, sifting through my memory for old tales I'd heard from other children. "Are you a _luporchan_?"
That sent him into gales of shrill laughter. "Of course I am! Of course I am, slave, and what's more I'm a Prince among _luporchans_! Son of the Queen. Though I'm a bad Prince and in royal disfavor, as you can see." He rattled his chains at us.
"Oh, shut up," Lewis snapped at him. "You're some kind of half-human hybrid, aren't you? And that poor boy from the monastery was being brought here to make more like you, wasn't he?"
"Was Mother feeling lustful again?" The Prince shook his head. "Another hairy little baby, I suppose, and perhaps he'll be as disobedient as me. That's the price we pay, though, isn't it?"
"Is it?" Lewis licked his lips. "Listen, if they're going to dismantle me, will you at least tell me what you people are?"
"What _we _are?" The Prince frowned. Then he leaned forward in his chains, looking sly. "I'll tell you a story, _fili._ No harp to accompany me? Too bad. You'll just have to make up the music in your head as we go along.
"This is _THE TALE OF THE THREE BRANCHES._
"In the Beginning, the great World-Tree bore three branches, and from each branch came a son. The eldest son was wide and strong, practical and brave, but not very imaginative. The second son was tall and graceful, creative and gifted, but prone to silliness and instability."
"I wonder if you're describing Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons?" speculated Lewis.
"Is that what they call themselves? The third son was small and weak and unfortunately something of an idiot, but he had one talent: he could invent clever things. _He_ wasn't clever himself, you understand, in fact he could barely speak or think, but he had an affinity for patterns and systems. And from these three sons of these three branches came the races of Men.
"And the children of the two older sons were able to reason and speak with each other, and they interbred: and the powerful and clever ones made war on the kin of the youngest son, to take by force the ingenious things they made. It was difficult for ideas to penetrate the heads of the kin, but this much got through to them: they must at all costs defend themselves against the big people, and hide from them somehow. And so this was what the stupid things focused on, with the dedication of ants, to the exclusion of all else, for all eternity, while their big cousins invented Civilization and Trade and Art!
"But the more they stayed in their hiding-places the stupider and weaker they became, as generations passed, and it became pitifully easy for the big people to find them, and raid them, and rape their queens. But then a remarkable thing happened! Half-breed children were born in the dark warrens of the kin who were bigger, and cleverer, and braver than the others! And they became the leaders because it occurred to them they _could _lead. So the kin prospered, and found better places to hide, and made more ingenious devices for protecting themselves. And this way, for a while, they had the advantage in the long, long game of Hide and Seek.
"Sadly, this advantage was lost." The Prince glared at Lewis. "It seems that at the other end of Time the big people found a way to create a new race, unnatural and immortal, clockwork and flesh mingled, a disgusting alteration of humanity. Of course they made them a slave race -- "
"Oh, we are not either," Lewis said testily.
" -- And they reached back through Time to plant these vile alterations in every civilization, to act as their agents, their spies, their thieves. Need I mention that one of their objectives was to find us, and help themselves to our useful inventions?"
"No, that's certainly not true!" Lewis objected. "They don't even believe you exist! If they had, they'd have warned me about you. But I was always told you people were a late-20th-century hoax!"
What that meant I couldn't fathom, but this much was becoming clear to me: Lewis' crazy story must be true, somehow. His enemies knew what he was, and how to harm him. These people were the incubi, the demons the Bible warned us about. But where in Scripture would I find Lewis, amongst what peoples of the earth?
"Not a slave race, eh?" retorted the Prince. "You know what they think you need to know, nothing more! And I'm sure my marvelous moron uncles will learn things from your dismantled carcass that will give us the mechanical advantage once again."
Lewis looked terrified, but he gave a disdainful little laugh. "So your own people can forge stronger chains for you? Why are you a prisoner, by the bye?"