"Christopher, John - The White Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Christopher John)

"Then do not let me keep you, Will, for though man does not live on bread alone, it is bread he must have first."
His tone was cheerful, but I thought I detected something else. Disappointment? I started to walk on, but after a few steps checked and looked back. His eyes were still on me.
I said, in a low voice, stumbling over the words, "Do you go out into the fields at all?"
"When the sun shines."
"Farther along the road on which I met you there's an old ruin, on the right-I have a den there, on the far side where the copse comes close. It has a broken arch for an entrance and an old red stone outside, like a seat."
He said softly. "I hear, Will. Do you spend much time there?"
"I go there after school, usually."
He nodded. "Do so."
Abruptly his gaze went from me to the sky, and he held his arms out above his head and shouted, "And in that year came Jim, the Prophet of Serendipity, and with him a host of angels, riding their white geldings across the sky, raising a dust of clouds and striking sparks from their hooves that burned the wheat in the fields, and the evil in men's hearts. So spake Ozymandias. Selah! Selah! Selah!"
The others were coming up the road from the school. I left him and hurried on toward home. I could hear him shouting until I passed the church.
I went to the den after school with mingled feelings of anticipation and unease. My father had said he hoped he would hear no more reports of my mixing with Vagrants, and had placed a direct prohibition on my going into Vagrant House. I had obeyed the second part and was taking steps to avoid the first, but I was under no illusion that he would regard this as anything but willful disobedience. And to what end? The opportunity of talking to a man whose conversation was a hodgepodge of sense and nonsense, with the latter very much predominating. It was not worth it.
And yet, remembering the keen blue eyes under the mass of red hair, I could not help feeling that there was something about this man that made the risk, and the disobedience, worthwhile. I kept a sharp lookout on my way to the ruins, and called out as I approached the den. But there was no one there; nor for a good time after that I began to think he was not coming-that his wits were so addled that he had faded [SIC] to take my meaning, or forgotten it altogether-when I heard a twig snap and, peering out, saw Ozymandias. He was less than ten yards from the entrance. He was not singing or talking, but moving quietly, almost stealthily.
A new fear struck me then. There were tales that a Vagrant once, years ago, had murdered children in a dozen villages, before he was caught and hanged. Could they be true, and could this be such another? I had invited him here, telling no one, and a cry for help would not be heard as far from the village as this. I froze against the wall of the den, tensing myself for a rush that might carry me past him to the comparative safety of the open.
But a single glance at him as he looked in reassured me. Whether mad or not, I was sure this was a man to be trusted. The lines in his face were the lines of good humor.
He said, "So I have found you, Will." He glanced about him in approval. "You have a snug place here."
"My cousin Jack did most of it. He is better with his hands than I am."
"The one that was Capped this summer?"
"Yes."
"You watched the Capping?" I nodded. "How is he since then?"
"Well," I said, "but different."
"Having become a man."
"Not only that."
"Tell me."
I hesitated a moment, but in voice and gesture as well as face he inspired confidence. He was also, I realized, talking naturally and sensibly, with none of the strange words and archaic phrases he had used previously. I began to talk, disjointedly at first and then with more ease, of what Jack had said, and of my own later perplexity. He listened, nodding at times but not interrupting.
When I had finished, he said, "Tell me, Will-what do you think of the Tripods?"
I said truthfully, "I don't know. I used to take them for granted-and I was frightened of them, I suppose-but now ... There are questions in my mind."
"Have you put them to your elders?"
"What good would it do? No one talks about the Tripods. One learns that as a child."
"Shall I answer them for you?" he asked. "Such as I can answer."
There was one thing I was sure of, and I blurted it out. "You are not a Vagrant!"
He smiled. "It depends what meaning you give that word. I go from place to place, as you see. And I behave strangely."
"But to deceive people, not because you cannot help it. Your mind has not been changed."
"No. Not as the minds of the Vagrants are. Nor as your cousin Jack's was, either."
"But you have been Capped!"
He touched the mesh of metal under his thatch of red hair.
"Agreed. But not by the Tripods. By men-free men."
Bewildered, I said, "I don't understand."
"How could you? But listen, and I will tell you. The Tripods, first. Do you know what they are?" I shook my head, and he went on. "Nor do we, as a certainty. There are two stories about them. One is that they were machines, made by men, which revolted against men and enslaved them."
"In the old days? The days of the giant ship, of the great-cities?"
"Yes. It is a story I find hard to believe, because I do not see how men could give intelligence to machines. The other story is that they do not come originally from this world, but another."
"Another world?"
I was lost again. He said, "They teach you nothing about the stars in school, do they? That is something that perhaps makes the second story more likely to be the true one. You are not told that the stars at night-all the hundreds of thousands of them-are suns like our own sun, and that some may have planets circling them as our earth circles this sun."
I was confused, my head spinning with the idea. I said, "Is this true?"
"Quite true. And it may be that the Tripods came, in the first place, from one of those worlds. It may be that the Tripods themselves are only vehicles for creatures who travel inside them. We have never seen the inside of a Tripod, so we do not know."
"And the Caps?"
"Are the means by which they keep men docile and obedient to them."
At first thought it was incredible. Later it seemed incredible that I had not seen this before. But all my life Capping had been something I had taken for granted. All my elders were Capped, and contented to be so. It was the mark of the adult, the ceremony itself solemn and linked in one's mind with the holiday and the feast. Despite the few who suffered pain and became Vagrants, it was a day to which every child looked forward. Only lately, as one could begin to count the months remaining had there been any doubts in my mind; and the doubts had been ill-formed and difficult to sustain against the weight of adult assurance. Jack had had doubts too, and then, with the Capping they had gone.
I said, "They make men think the things the Tripods want them to think?"
They control the brain. How, or to what extent, we are not sure. As you know, the metal is joined to the flesh, so that it cannot be removed. It seems that certain general orders are given when the Cap is put on. Later, specific orders can be given to specific people, but as far as the majority are concerned, they do not seem to bother."
"How do the Vagrants happen?"