"David Freer - The Forlorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Freer Dave)

her that not knowing could be worse.

He felt at the jewel in the amulet. It was cold and oily feeling as always. His inheritance . . . along with
two books. The one with the bright pictures which his mother had begged off a drunken highborn trick.
Tales of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table. He'd loved that book. The other,
Geophysical Survey of Planet IV,had been an incomprehensible thing of lists and strange words. He'd
been taught to read from those two books. Before he'd found the library they'd been the only books he'd
ever seen. He'd read both of them many times. The latter book had words his mother had said even his
great-grandfather had not understood. But he'd been made to read them all, even the strange,
burnt-edged pages glued into the back ofGeophysical Survey тАФ"Log of the StarshipMorningstar ." On
the last page someone had scrawled:

"Even if everything else is lost, perhaps this will survive."

Suddenly the hideout seemed too small. He needed air, and space around himself, so that he could see
them coming. On the lower floors they'd bricked up the chimney. Here on the top floor they'd just
pushed the old-fashioned bookstand against it. He'd noticed it when he'd lifted the bookstand to crawl
under it, and realized that it gave the hideout its most essential featureтАФa bolt hole.

He'd loosened the back planks ages ago, but it had taken him a while to brave the narrow, dark shaft.
He'd been tempted to use it as a latrine, but instead had decided that digging out the bottom could give
him access to the drains . . . his digging hadn't made much progress yet. He'd broken through into the
rubble-filled foundations. There was a weary lot of broken bricks, rocks and concrete fragments to shift
before he could get anywhere.

Upwards, however, had proved easier. There had been that tiny circle of sky to aim towards. He'd
knocked the chimney pot off one stormy night, and come out into the sheeting rain onto the steep tiled
roof.

The roof had a low balustrade. The library was one of the tallest buildings in the city, but, naturally, not
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as tall as the Patrician's palace. That many-turreted monstrosity hung over the harbor, like some
tax-gathering vulture. However, on the landward side of the roof it couldn't even be seen. Instead, there
was a view out across the desert, with the thin green line of the Tinarana River and the cultivated lands
beside it stretching away to the distant, dusty hinterland. Since Keilin had cut away some of the rotting
brick of the chimney below the level of the balustrade, and replaced it with a stolen sheet of tin, he came
up here often. Sometimes he came to trap pigeons . . . and sometimes just to gaze out across the vast
emptiness, and pretend that he was lord of all he surveyed.

After the sea wind had howled for days, and blown away the miasma of coal and dung smoke from the
city hearthfires, he could make out the distant purple mountains. He thought again about the colored
illustration that painted his mental picture of mountains. Tall trees around a rushing stream that wove
through mossy rocks. Huh! Half of the boys in the city didn't even know therewasanything beyond the
desert. He'd seen the mountains on a map long before he'd come up here . . . That was it! Maps. They'd
be watching the harbor. They'd watch the coast road, and the caravan trail. Perhaps there could be
another way?