"ferryman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

He interrupted, his pulse racing. "I don't want to talk about your mother."
"Well I do," Susanne said. "This is important."

He recalled his excuse. "As a matter of fact it's impossible right now..." He held up his right hand, showing Susanne the band around his wrist.

"You've been called."
"It's quite a way - over the Pennines. Hebden Bridge. I should really be setting off. Look... make yourself at home. You know where the spare room is. We can... we'll talk in the morning, okay?"

He caught the flash of impatience on her face, soon doused by the realisation that nothing came between him and his calling.

She sighed. "Fine. See you in the morning."

Relief lifting from his shoulders like a weight, Lincoln nodded and hurried outside. Seconds later he was revving the Range Rover up the uneven track, into the darkness.

The road through the Pennines had been gritted earlier that night, and the snow that had fallen since had turned into a thin grey mush. Lincoln drove cautiously, his the only vehicle out this late. Insulated from the cold outside, he tried to forget about the presence of Susanne back at the cottage. He half-listened to a discussion programme on Radio Four. He imagined half a dozen dusty academics huddled in a tiny studio in Bush House. Cockburn, the Cambridge philosopher, had the microphone: "It is indeed possible that individuals will experience a certain disaffection, even apathy, which is the result of knowing that there is more to existence than this life..."

Lincoln wondered if this might explain the alienation he had felt for a year, since accepting his present position. But then he'd always had difficulty in showing his emotions, and consequently accepting that anyone else had emotions to show.
This life is a prelude, he thought, a farce I've endured for fifty-five years - the end of which I look forward to with anticipation.

It took him almost two and a half hours to reach Hebden Bridge. The small town, occupying the depths of a steep valley, was dank and quiet in the continuing snowfall. Streetlights sparkled through the darkness.

He drove through the town and up a steep hill, then turned right up an even steeper minor road. Hillcrest Farm occupied a bluff overlooking the acute incision of the valley. Coachlights burned orange around the front porch. A police car was parked outside.

Lincoln climbed from the Range Rover and hurried across to the porch. He stood for a second before pressing the door-bell, composing himself. He always found it best to adopt a neutral attitude until he could assess the mood of the bereaved family: more often than not the mood in the homes of the dead was one of excitement and anticipation.
Infrequently, especially if the bereaved were religious, a more formal grief prevailed.

He pressed the bell and seconds later a ruddy-faced local constable opened the door. "There you are. We've been wondering if you'd make it, weather like it is."
"Nice night for it," Lincoln said, stepping into the hall.

The constable gestured up a narrow flight of stairs. "The dead man's a farmer - silly bugger went out looking for a lost ewe. Heart attack. His daughter was out with him - but he was dead by the time she fetched help. He's in the front bedroom."
Lincoln followed the constable up the stairs and along a corridor. The entrance to the bedroom was impossibly low; both men had to stoop as if entering a cave.
He saw the bereaved family first, half a dozen men and women in their twenties and thirties, seated around the bed on dining chairs. An old woman, presumably the farmer's widow, sat on the bed itself, her husband's lifeless blue hand clutched in hers.

Lincoln registered the looks he received as he entered the room: the light of hope and gratitude burned in the eyes of the family, as if he, Lincoln himself, was responsible for what would happen over the course of the next six months.
The farmer lay fully-dressed on the bed, rugged and grey like the carving of a knight on a sarcophagus.

An actor assuming a role, Lincoln nodded with suitable gravity to each of the family in turn.

"If anyone has any questions, anything at all, I'll be glad to answer them." It was a line he came out with every time to break the ice, but he was rarely questioned these days.

He stepped forward and touched his bracelet to the dead man's temple, where his implant raised a veined, weather-worn rectangle beneath the skin. The nanomeks would now begin the next stage of the process, the preparation of the body for its onward journey.

"I'll fetch the container," he said - he never called it a coffin - and nodded to the constable.

Together they carried the polycarbon container from the back of the Range Rover, easing it around the bends in the stairs. The family formed a silent huddle outside the bedroom door. Lincoln and the constable passed inside and closed the door behind them.

They lifted the corpse into the container and Lincoln sealed the sliding lid. The job of carrying the container down the stairs - attempting to maintain dignity in the face of impossible angles and improbable bends - was made all the more difficult by the presence of the family, watching from the stair landing.

Five minutes of gentle coaxing and patient lifting and turning, and the container was in the back of the Range Rover.