"Brin, David - Uplift 5 - Infinity's Shore" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

а

So I never allude to the mission we four were given by Uriel the Smith-to seek a taboo treasure that her ancestors left on the seafloor, centuries ago. An offshore cache, hidden when urrish settlers first jettisoned their ships and high-tech gadgets to become just one more fallen race. Only some dire emergency would prompt Uriel to violate the Covenant by retrieving such contraband.

а

I guess "emergency" might cover the arrival of alien robbers, plundering the Gathering Festival of the Six Races and threatening the entire Commons with genocide,

а

Eventually, the pangs in my spine eased enough for me to rummage through my rucksack and resume writing in this tattered journal, bringing my ill-starred adventure up to date. That raised my spirits a bit. Even if none of us survives, my diary might yet make it home someday.

а

Growing up in a little hoonish village, devouring human adventure stories by Clarke and Rostand, Conrad and Xu Xiang, I dreamed that people on the Slope would someday say, "Wow, that Alvin Hph-wayuo was some storyteller, as good as any old-time Earther."

а

This could be my one and only chance.

а

So I spent long miduras with a stubby charcoal crayon clutched in my big hoon fist, scribbling the passages that lead up to this one-an account of how I came to find myself in this low, low state.

а

-How four friends built a makeshift submarine out of skink skins and a carved-out garu log, fancying a treasure hunt to the Great Midden.

а

-How Uriel the Smith, in her mountain forge, threw her support behind our project, turning it from a half-baked dream into a real expedition.

а

-How we four snuck up to Uriel's observatory, and heard a human sage speak of starships in the sky, perhaps bringing foretold judgment on the Six Races.

а

-And how Wuphon's Dream soon dangled from a pole near Terminus Rock, where the Midden's sacred trench passes near land. And Uriel told us, hissing through her cloven upper lip, that a ship had indeed landed up north. But this cruiser did not carry Galactic magistrates. Instead another kind of criminal had come, worse even than our sinner ancestors.

а

So we sealed the hatch, and the great winch turned. But on reaching the mapped site, we found that Uriel's cache was already missing! Worse-when we went looking for the damned thing, Wuphon's Dream got lost and tumbled off the edge of an undersea cliff.

а

Flipping back some pages, I can tell my account of the journey was written by someone perched on a knife-edge of harrowing pain. Yet, there is a sense of drama I can't hope to match now. Especially that scene where the bottom vanished beneath our wheels and we felt ourselves fall toward the real Midden.

а