"Phillip Jose Farmer - Dark is the Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

DARK IS THE SUN




DARK IS THE SUN

Copyright┬й 1979 by Philip Jose Farmer

e-book ver. 1.0




DEDICATION

In alphabetical order, to my granddaughters Andrea Josephsohn and Kimberley Ladd; my daughter,
Kristen; my grandson Matthew Josephsohn; my son, Philip Laird; my granddaughter Stephanie
Josephsohn; my grandson Torin Paul Farmer. And to any descendants of my wife, Bette Virginia Andre,
and of myself fifteen billion years from now, when this story takes place.


1
BLACK was the sun; bright, the sky.

Under the arc packed with dead and living stars, dark or blazing gas clouds and galaxies, on an Earth in
which lay the bones or over which blew the dust of seven hundred fifty-four million or so generations,
Deyv walked toward his destiny.

"Look for a mate and find a dragon" was a proverb of the tribe.

If you were a pessimist, it sounded ominous. If you were an optimist, it sounded rewarding. There were
good dragons and there were evil. Or so Deyv understood. He'd never seen one.

Like most people, Deyv's attitude depended upon the circumstances. At the moment, he was scared and
so pessimistic.

Deyv of the Red Egg walked away from the Turtle Tribe of the Upside-Down House. Towering behind
him was the House, a cylinder three hundred feet in diameter, made of indestructible metal. Its red,
green, and white checked walls slanted slightly so that the round base, ten stories above the ground,

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afforded an unimpeded view of the earth directly below. The conical tip was buried ten stories deep.
Once, according to what the old women said, the House had been entirely under the ground. But erosion
and numerous earthquakes had pushed it up ten generations ago.

To Deyv's left, in the center of the clearing, stood the soul-egg tree. Its gnarly trunk was bare of
branches for twenty feet, and then the branches began that formed a cone standing on its apex. The bark