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

"Man does not comprehend chaos. That is why man is man, and not of another nature." The traveler smiled at him. "I wish now to pose my final question; do you grant that I have well and sufficiently answered yours?"
"You have given me another million questions to ask," sighed Manuus, shaking his grey head. "But that also, I suppose, stems from the nature of mankind. Ask away."
"Your supposition is correct. Now my last question: enchanter, what is your opinion of a god?"
"I do not know what a god is," said Manuus. "And I doubt that any man knows, though many think they do."
"Fair enough," said the black-clad traveler, and rose.
"Have you not even one more question to put to me?" suggested the enchanter with a wan smile.
"No," said the traveler.
Manuus gave a shrug and rose also. "Then I can only thank you for having graced my dwelling, sir," he said formally. "Few of my colleagues can have enjoyed the honor of receiving you personally."
The traveler bestowed on him a hard, forthright look.
"I have many names, but one nature," he said. "Man has one name, and many more than two natures. But the essential two are these: that he shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that he shall strive to take advantage of chaos. You, sir, are not a better enchanter for having received me here, but a worse one. And, I may say, such people as you are often the greatest allies of the powers who were before me."
"I resent that, sir," said Manuus frostily. "Let it not be said that I oppose one whose task I am aware of."
"A third element of man's nature," the traveler murmured, "is this: that he shall not understand what he is doing. Good day to you, Manuus-though whether it will be is rather up to you than up to me."

The traveler left Manuus deep in thought, with one elbow on a book in front of him, his chin cupped in his hand, his eyes staring vacantly at his pet owl. The traveler set forward, towards the gold and silver towers of Ryovora, and there went among the populace confirming what he had been told.
That same argument which Manuus had put him bluntly, he heard indirectly expressed before the houses of the great merchant-enchanters, who conjured this city's goods from the far corners of the world; so too in the market-square, and in private homes, and in taverns and theatres and laboratories and even in the houses of ill-repute. And when at last he came to stand upon the roof of a high silver tower and overlook the sleeping city in the small dead hours, he was convinced.
Yes, truly, the people of Ryovora were dissatisfied, and it was as Manuus had claimed. They had struggled through centuries inquiring of the mute cosmos what its nature and the nature of man might be, and they were left still hungering, to the point of growing weary.
This hunger-so they said-would be assuaged if only they had a god, as did their neighbors in Acromel. News had arrived, of course, that the god of Acromel had caused the death of many citizens, and widespread misery, but they ascribed all that to the stupidity of Duke Vaul. "We are sensible people!" they insisted. "We would know how to treat a god!"
The traveler stood gazing out over the placid, sleeping city. Moonlight shone on the roofs of glorious buildings, on the river's ripples, on bridges and mansions and on fine wide roads.
He had asked everywhere, "What is the nature of a god?" And they had said confidently, "We have no god, so how can we tell? But if we had one-ah, then we should know!"
The traveler remained rapt in thought until the dawn-flush tinged the east, absorbing and reviewing the desire that inchoately washed against his mind. At last, a breath or two before the sun rose, a quirking smile twisted his mouth upwards, and he put out his staff over the city and said, "As you wish, so be it."
Then, his task for the moment being accomplished, he departed.

IV

To park a car while one goes for a walk in the woods is not uncommon. To return and find that the car is no longer there is not unprecedented. But to return and find that the road itself, on which the car was parked, has likewise vanished, is a different matter entirely.
Yet for a man who rules himself by the straightforward logic of common sense, there is no need instantly to assume that a problem of this nature is insoluble. Bernard Brown was such a person, and it was to him that this improbable event had just occurred.
"Well!" he said, looking at the indisputably grassy surface of the narrow ride between two high hedges where to the best of his recollection-and his memory was a good one-there had shortly before been a tarmac highway. "Well!" he said again, and since there was no obvious alternative sat down on a rock and smoked a cigarette in a philosophical manner.
However, no one came by who might enlighten him on the fate either of his car or of the road it had been on, so when the cigarette had reduced to a stub, he dropped it in the grass, ground it out with his foot, and began to walk along the lane between the hedges.
By the straightforward logic of common sense, a road which had been here a scant hour ago could not during his absence have removed itself to another location. Therefore it must be he who was misplaced; he had no doubt missed his way in the pleasant summery woodland, and would eventually return if not to the road he had first followed then to some other that intersected with it.
He strode along jauntily enough, not much worried by the turn of affairs, and whistled as he walked. Occasionally the hedges on either side parted after he had gone by, and eyes studied him thoughtfully, but since he did not notice this fact it did not trouble him.
At length the hedges ended, and with them the trees of the wood, and he emerged onto a rutted track between two ploughed fields. On the near side of one of these fields a man with a kerchief tied around his neck and his legs soiled to the knee with dirt was backing up a large and obstreperous horse, harnessed to a cart whose contents were indeterminate but stank incredibly. Politely ignoring the smell, Bernard spoke to the man directly.
"Excuse me! Can you tell me the way to the London road?"
The man considered for a moment. Then he spat in the earth where it was new-turned by his horse's enormous hooves, and said bluntly, "No."
Well, that was at least an answer, if not a very helpful one. Bernard Brown shrugged and walked on.
Again the grassy ride passed between hedges, and began to wind so that at any one moment only twenty paces of it before and twenty behind were in clear view. From around a bend ahead a voice could be heard raised in song and growing louder. This voice was of intersexual quality, neither altogether male nor altogether female, and shrilled occasionally on the highest notes with shiver-provoking acidity.
Shortly, the singer came in sight, and Bernard found himself confronted by a young man, with very white hair cut short around his head, riding negligently on a gaily caparisoned horse that moved its head in time with the beat of its master's song. His attire was extraordinary, for he wore a shirt of red and yellow and loose breeches of bright green, the color of a sour apple, and his horse was if anything more surprising, inasmuch as it was skewbald of purple and pale blue. The rider accompanied his singing on a small plucked instrument, the strings of which chirruped like birds.
When he perceived Bernard, he abandoned his song in mid-phrase, let his instrument fall on a baldric to his side, and halted his horse. Then he leaned one hand on the pommel of his saddle and fixed the pedestrian with bright hard eyes; these were violet.
"Good morrow, stranger," he said in a light tone. "And what is your business here?"
"I'm trying to find the London road again," said Bernard Brown, lifting his eyebrows in astonishment at the spectacle.
"There is no such road near here," said the young man, and shook his head sorrowfully. "I know that to be a fact for all the roads in this vicinity belong to me."
"Now this is all very well," said Bernard, and gave a smile to show he was party to the joke. "But while it may amuse you to make such a grandiose assertion, it does not amuse me to be denied essential guidance. I've lost my way somehow, through taking a wrong turning in the woods, and I badly need directions."
The young man drew himself upright and urged his horse forward-and it could be seen now that this was not a young man riding a horse, nor was there in fact a horse being ridden, but some sort of confusion of the two, in that the man's legs were not separated at all from his mount. They ended in fleshy stalks, uniting with the belly of that part of the composite animal resembling a horse.
"This is extraordinary!" thought Bernard to himself, but being mannerly forbore to remark on the combination.
The young man gave him a hard stare, hand falling to a sharp sword beside his left thigh. "Who are you?" he demanded. "And where are you from, that you do not recognize me?"
Nettled, Bernard rejoined, "Unless you had taken part in a circus, or been exhibited at the Zoo, I would not presume to recognize you!"
The horse-head and the man-head together reared back in appalled amazement, and the bright sword whined through the air. Discreetly, feeling that he had to do with a creature whose mind was as abnormal as its body, Bernard had already stepped out of range when the blade flashed by.
"I am Jorkas!" howled the man-horse creature. "Now do you still say you do not know me?"
Alarmed at the composite personage's behavior, Bernard replied in a tone as civil as could be expected after the attack with the sword, "No, sir, I do not, and I may say that your actions give me little cause to wish we had become acquainted earlier."
The man-face contorted with unbelievable rage, and the sword swung high for a second blow as the horse-body danced three steps towards Bernard. He was on the point of making an inglorious-and predictably ill-fated-retreat, when a sudden ringing noise indicated that the blade had struck something very resistant in its downward passage. Indeed, the man-creature was shaking its sword-arm as though it had been numbed all the way to the shoulder.
The obstacle the sword had encountered was a glittering staff, upheld in the firm grip of a black-clad man who had somehow contrived to approach the two of them without being noticed. This person was now standing, leaning on the staff, and regarding Jorkas with a wry expression.