"John Dalmas - The Regiment A Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

across the gravel pan where the only midday movement was a drill bird
flying from thorn jug to thorn jug, to listen and peep, peck and swallow.
And Ka-Shok wondered what the truth was of our origins. For to her, the
old stories of gods and demons seemed unreal in the world of heat and
drought, of hard labor beneath the stars, of bore-worms in the root crops.
It occurred to her then that one should be able to look at a place and see
what had been there in its past, seeing things the way they had been
instead of the way they were at present. If one knew how. It also seemed
to her that she did know how, if she could only do it right.
Now to do something, one must first start. And she decided to start by
closing her eyes to what was there at that time; perhaps then she could
see the long before. So she closed them, but before long went to sleep
and saw only dreams until a scorpion stung her.
That was but her first attempt, for its failure, and the failures that followed,
did not discourage her. Before the season of rains came two more times,
she had begun to see the past; and not only the past of where she was,
but the pasts of other places. And of living people-things that had
happened to them before that lifetime, which she had not expected. And
she spoke of these things to her husband, who thereupon beat her and
called her crazy, and to her daughters and son who, in fear, began to keep
her grandchildren away from her.
But she continued looking, seeing more and more, further and further
back, only saying no more about it. And it was as if this activity, though
pursued in silence, was like a signal fire in the night, attracting seekers.
For a certain few people, both old and young, some of them strangers,
sought her out, confiding in her their dreams and wonderings, seeking her
advice. Until at length, she and some of those few went away, west into
the Jubat Hills, where they lived on the sparse catch of snares and fish
traps and the roots of certain plants, and together they sought back in
time, with her as their guide.
Mostly they kept apart from any others. But this one and that would return
to their homes from time to time. And when anyone asked them what they
had been doing, they answered simply that they had been praying in the
hills with an old woman. For what they had seen seemed at the time too
strange to tell others, who might beat them for it or drive them away.
Nonetheless, bit by bit, others, not knowing why they did so, decided to
go and pray with Ka-Shok, who by then had begun to be wizened and
gray-headed. And they became too many to be fed from snares and fish
traps. So one who owned land and water rights took Ka-Shok and the
others home with him, to the dismay of his son there, and they dug many
cells into a hill, that each could have his or her own. And this man
declared rules of conduct, and rules of duties, that so far as possible they
might continue to seek without the distractions of misconduct, for they did
not yet know T'sel.
And not only did they see more and more of what had been in the past,
but they began to glimpse behind the Here, and behind the There. And
before Ka-Shok departed the ancient husk her body had become, more
and more seekers had come to her, until the community moved again,
occupying an entire valley and building irrigation works greater than had
been seen before on Tyss.