"Brunner,.John.-.Traveler.In.Black.V1 (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brunner John)

On that same knoll from which the spokesman of Acromel's forces had addressed the Margrave, Bernard Brown sat with his chin in his hands, staring gloomily at nothing. His dismal contemplation was interrupted at length by the presence of one who was not a stranger, who stood before him leaning on a remarkable staff.
"I've seen you before," said Bernard slowly. "Well, who are you?"
The black-clad one chuckled. "He to whom the task was given of bringing order out of chaos in this corner of the universe," he replied. "And who are you?"
"I'm not sure I know any longer," admitted Bernard after a pause. "I thought I was Bernard Brown until recently, and that I was a rather ordinary kind of person. But these past few days people have been telling me so repeatedly I'm a god that I've almost been convinced of the idea."
The black-clad man clucked with his tongue. "I'm afraid that isn't true at all," he said. "So-since I was responsible for involving you with all this-I'd better explain."
He sat down companionably alongside Bernard on the knoll, and gestured in the air with his staff. A short distance away, in a pleasant meadow, some clinging ground-mist cleared to reveal the ruins of a castle, smoking quietly.
"An enchanter called Manuus dwelt there," he said. "A person with-so to speak-a vested interest in the chaos which formerly engulfed the entire universe. This sort of thing."
He gestured again, and out of a hill a mile or two this side of Acromel a-a-a . . . Well, a pair of yellow eyes peered briefly. What could be seen in those eyes defied description. It made Bernard shudder with amazement and repugnance.
"So where am I?" he demanded. "Or is it a question of when am I?"
"Neither. We are speaking of a borderland between chaos, existing in eternity, and reason, existing in time.
At this moment, the balance is uncertain, but it is tipping, bit by bit. You have been quite invaluable in tilting it beyond a crucial point."
"I don't understand!" complained Bernard.
"No matter. If you did understand the nature of chaos, men being what they are, you would certainly be conceited enough to wish to exploit it. This in fact is what those vain enchanters do: turn the forces of chaos to their own advantage. But, logically, to control chaos with reason is to impose lasting order on it. This implies in turn that sooner or later chaos will reign no longer."
Bernard's face exhibited sudden comprehension. "I see!" he exclaimed. "In other words, these magicians or whatever necessarily destroy what they most desire to preserve, by imposing rational control on it."
"You get the point exactly," said the one in black.
"And it's up to you to ensure that things come out right?"
"Alas, yes!"
"Hmm!" Bernard rubbed his chin. "That sounds like a tough chore! Who landed you with it, if I may ask?"
"You may not. I'm very sorry." The tone was final; still, the words were succeeded by a chuckle. This black-garbed fellow was really very pleasant, Bernard reflected. Casting around for the other question he had meant to put, he recalled it.
"Well, then! May I at least ask what it was I did?"
"That, yes! You see, there was dissatisfaction in Ryovora so long as the people felt they had to have "a god. So I gave them one ... of a kind. And after all that, they realized their god had done nothing for them which they could not have achieved by using their heads. My compliments, by the way, on the elegant manner in which you demonstrated that."
"I was scared silly," confessed Bernard.
"But you kept your wits about you, and refused to be overawed by mere size. The universe is a big place, and there are many corners of it where chaos on the grand scale still obtains. This, then, is a valuable attitude to inculcate."
Bernard pondered for a while. At last he shook his head and sighed. "I guess I'm actually dreaming," he said. "I can't believe a word you say."
"Congratulations, and thank you," said the black-clad one dryly. "That you can speak thus is an earnest of my eventual success. Sometimes it seems a very long way away."
"What will-if this is the right way to put it-what will happen then?"
"I don't know," said his companion. "Why should I care? I'll have finished my appointed job. And since you have now finished yours ..."

When he was alone, the traveler in black stood awhile leaning on his staff of curdled light, gazing at the wreck of Manuus's castle.
Chaos.
He decreed it out of existence. Since Manuus no longer held it tenaciously in being, it disappeared. Across the site the grass grew green and orderly.
The traveler wished that Bernard had not asked his last question. It was discomforting. Now and then he regretted that he must inevitably find out its answer.
Yet it was not in his nature-and his nature was single-to undo anything he had done. Therefore, inexorably, he was approaching that ultimate moment.
He shrugged, and then there was nothing but the knoll and the afternoon sunlight, while people made merry in Ryovora.

two
BREAK THE DOOR OF HELL

"I will break the door of hell and smash the bolts; I will bring up the dead to eat food with the living, and the living shall be outnumbered by the host of them."

-The Epic of Gilgamesh
I

Time had come to Ryovora.
The traveler in black contemplated the fact from the brow of the hill where he had imprisoned Laprivan, more eons ago than it was possible to count. Leaning on his staff made of light, he repressed a shiver. Single though his nature might be, unique though that attribute certainly was, he was not immune from apprehension; his endowments did not include omniscience.
Time had come to that great city: Time, in which could exist order and logic and rational thought. And so it was removed from his domain for ever, vanished from the borderland of chaos situated timeless in eternity.
The task for which his single nature fitted him was the bringing forth of order; accordingly it might have been expected that he should feel the satisfaction of achievement, or even a mildly conceited pleasure. He did not, and for this there were two most cogent reasons and a third which he preferred not to consider.
The first, and most piquing, was that his duty lay on him: this season followed the conjunction of four significant planets hereabout, and he was setting forth to oversee that portion of the All which lay in his charge, as he was constrained to. And he had grown accustomed to terminating his round of inspection at Ryovora. Lapses and backsliding from common sense had occasionally minded him to alter this habit; still, he had never done so, and to discover that Ryovora was elsewhere annoyed him somewhat.
The second reason was not annoying. It was alarming, and dismaying, and unprecedented, and many other distressing epithets.
"In sum," the traveler in black announced to the air, "it's unheard-of!"