"Gray, Julia - Guardian 01 - The Dark Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gray Julia)

'You'd have thought he'd have paid up for a better roof then,' Elam commented.
'This isn't a tomb,' Alyssa stated quietly. 'It was built for the living.'
'But there aren't any windows,' Elam objected. 'Who'd want to be in the dark all the time?'
'And who'd want to live here? Terrel added. 'In the middle of a cemetery?'
'You don't need windows if you can open the roof. And if you're looking for peace and quiet, where better than among the dead?' Alyssa replied, answering both their questions in one go.
'What do you mean, "open the roof'?' Elam asked, looking at the crooked outline again.
'Come on,' she replied. 'I'll show you. There has to be a way in somewhere.'
They circled round and, just as Alyssa had predicted, found a simple wooden door. As they drew closer, Alyssa - who was in the lead now - came to an abrupt halt, and the boys soon saw what had made her hesitate. Next to the doorway, half hidden by long grass, was a skeleton. It had evidently been there a very long time; the bones were clean, bleached a pure white by the sun and rain, but it was still more or less intact. A few of the smallest bones had fallen away, but the larger ones were still in the positions they had assumed in life. The skeleton was sitting on the ground, its. spine resting against the wall, with long legs stretched out in front and crossed casually at the ankles. The skull was tipped forward so that the jawbone rested on the breastbone, and what was left of the hands lay in what had once been its lap. More remarkable still, a small clay pipe was cradled within one of those hands.
'He looks as though he stepped out for a smoke and just fell asleep,' Elam said, his voice uncharacteristically solemn.
'Maybe he did,' Alyssa said.
'Not a bad way to go,' the young boy commented quietly.
Terrel wanted to ask if he was still there, if his ghost still inhabited the strange home that he had presumably occupied in life. But he found himself unaccountably moved, and unable to speak past the lump in his throat.
'He's moved on,' Alyssa said, answering his unspoken question. 'He has no reason to come back here.'
It was very quiet now on the hilltop. Even the birds seemed to have fallen silent.
'Well, are we going inside?' Elam asked eventually.
Alyssa nodded, and together they moved forward and began to push at the door. Although it was not locked, the wood had warped so that it scraped across the stone floor inside, making it difficult to open. As they pushed, Terrel squatted down next to the skeleton, and stared at the blank face. There was a macabre kind of peace in those empty eye sockets, but he sensed something more, some unfinished business, and was swept by another wave of emotion. It was not quite sadness, not quite regret, but a kind of unrealized longing. On impulse he reached out and took the pipe, slipping it into his pocket.
'Wow! Terrel, come and look at this!' Elam called. He and Alyssa had managed to open the door enough for them to squeeze by.
Terrel stood up and went in, seeing immediately what had excited Elam. In the centre of the large square room, dominating everything around it, stood a complicated metal apparatus supporting a long brass tube. The tube was set at an angle, its upper end pointing out towards the gaping hole in the roof.
'What is it?' Elam asked.
'I think it's a telescope.'
'A what?'
'The astrologers use them to look at the moons and stars. It makes them bigger. This must have been an observatory.' Terrel understood the roofs strange design now. Looking round, he saw another contraption off to one side, its winding handles connected via ratchets and chain pulleys to the curving doors that had once formed the movable roof. The roof had long since fallen into disrepair, and part of it had collapsed, adding to the litter strewn upon the floor.
'Will it make us bigger?' Alyssa asked.
'What?' Terrel was confused.
'The telescope. You said it made the astrologers bigger.'
'No, silly,' he laughed. 'It makes what you're looking at bigger, not you.' He thought about this, and added, 'Actually, it only makes it seem bigger, so you can see more detail.'
'Oh, you mean it bends light,' Alyssa said, her tone now matter-of-fact.
Terrel stared at her. His friend had virtually no education, could not even read, but every so often she came out with astonishing remarks like that one - and made him feel stupid.
'Does it still work?' Elam asked.
Terrel twisted himself into position, and put his eye to the lower end of the tube. All he could see was a circle of brightness.
'I think so,' he said. 'But we can't see anything during the day. I'd only be able to tell properly at night.'
'That's not much use then, if we're stuck inside with the curfew.' Elam replaced his friend and peered through the telescope briefly, then lost interest and went to examine the other contents of the room.
Terrel was still absorbed in studying the apparatus, and spent some time trying to work out what its various wheels and levers were for. It seemed obvious to him that they were designed to enable the operator to move the telescope - it wouldn't be much use if you could only look at one point in the sky, after all - but either he was doing something wrong or the entire construction was so corroded that the rust had set it solidly in place. He had no idea how long the rain might have been falling through the open roof, but suspected it was many years. Feeling disappointed, he joined the others in exploring the rest of the room.
There were bird droppings all over the floor, and a few small bones and feathers, as well as fragments of wood and metal. The remains of a narrow bed lay in one corner, its rotten frame patched with mildew and fungi. A once sturdy table had fared better. It was still standing at least, its surface even more cluttered and dirty than the floor. Among the debris Terrel picked out several tools, a small bottle stained with what might once have been ink, several pieces of wire, and what at first glance seemed to be a collection of curiously symmetrical pebbles. However, when he picked one of these up and rubbed a little of the grime from its surface, he soon discovered that it was a piece of clear glass or crystal, beautifully cut in facets. It might have been an experimental lens for a telescope, but Terrel had immediately thought of another idea for its use. He slipped the crystal into his pocket.
The only other item in the observatory to have withstood the depredations of time was a large, iron-bound chest, and it was this that now occupied Elam and Alyssa. There was apparently no lock, and the leather straps that must once have held it closed were now no more than a few mouldering tatters but, try as they might, they could not get the lid to budge at all. It was Terrel who solved the problem, finding two pieces of metal - one thin and sharp, the other a solid lump - and using them like a chisel and hammer. The blade was gradually driven into the crack below the lid, and worked round until, with a loud creak and a sudden exhalation of stale air - as if the chest were sighing - the lid shifted. The musty smell from inside was instantly familiar to Terrel and his sense of excitement intensified, but Elam's reaction to the contents of the trunk was quite different.
'Books!' he exclaimed in disgust. 'Is that all there is?'
'What did you expect?' Terrel asked. 'Gold and jewels?'
Elam shrugged.
'Something interesting, at least,' he said.
As Elam wandered off, Terrel pulled one of the volumes out of the trunk, handling it with great care. The leather binding was still in good condition, and the edges of the pages within weren't too badly discoloured. There was nothing on the cover to indicate what the book contained, but when Terrel gently prised it open he saw that the first page had been inscribed simply with a date - 'Atl7'.
'The seventeenth year in the reign of Emperor Ataman,' he translated, then thought for a moment. 'That's over four hundred years ago!'
'What's that down there?' Alyssa asked, pointing to a word scrawled at the bottom of the page.
'It looks like "Muzeni". Do you think that was his name? The man who lived here, I mean.'
'Could be.'
'And these are his journals,' Terrel concluded. 'This is incredible!' He turned to the next page, and found it covered with tiny but perfectly legible script.
'Read it to me.'
Terrel nodded and began.
'"History will prove me right. Just as the moons orbit Nydus, so this planet orbits the sun. (If this truth is damned as the 'belief of a madman and I am confined here, so be it. Truth is not altered.) Our sun is a star like millions of others. It only appears so big and so bright to us because it is so much closer than any of the others. Yet it is big, far larger than this planet - and the rules governing the columns of attraction, that determine the motions of the stars, decree that the smaller object falls under the influence of the larger."' Terrel paused. 'In his time most people thought the sun went round Nydus,' he explained. 'Everyone knows it's the other way round now, but then it was considered blasphemy. History did prove him right.'
'What are "columns of attraction"?' Alyssa asked.
'I don't know. Maybe he'll tell us.' Terrel turned back to the journal. ' "The seers who call themselves scientists are nothing but deluded incompetents, as were the short-sighted fools who less than a century ago believed that only three moons existed, and refused to countenance the possibility of a fourth simply because they could not see it." '