"M. John Harrison - Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison John M)

some shift of vision had altered his perspective: he saw clearly that the gaps between the larger stones
made the same sorts of shapes as the gaps between the smaller ones. The more he looked, the more the
arrangement repeated itself. Suddenly he understood this as a condition of things тАФ if you could see the
patterns the waves made, or remember the shapes of a million small white clouds, there it would be, a
boiling, inexplicable, vertiginous similarity in all the processes of the world, roaring silently away from you
in ever-shifting repetitions, always the same, never the same thing twice.
In that moment he was lost. Out of the sand, the sky, the pebbles тАФ out of what he would later think
of as the willed fractality of things тАФ emerged the Shrander. He had no name for it then. It had no shape
for him. But it was in his dreams thereafter, as a hollow, an absence, a shadow on a door. He woke from
this latest dream, forty years later, and it was a pale wet morning with fog in the trees on the other side of
the road. Anna Kearney clung to him, saying his name.
 'Was I awful last night? I feel much better now.'
He fucked her again, and then left. At the door of the flat she said: 'People think it's a failure to live
alone, but it isn't. The failure is to live with someone because you can't face anything else.' Pinned to the
back of the door was another note: Someone loves you. All his life Kearney had preferred women to
men. It was a visceral or genetic choice, made early. Women calmed him as much as he excited them. As
a result, perhaps, his dealings with men had quickly become awkward, unproductive, chafing.

What had the dice advised? He was no more certain than he had ever been. He decided he would try to
find Valentine Sprake, Sprake, who had helped him on and off over the years, lived somewhere in North
London. But though Kearney had a telephone number for him, he wasn't sure it was reliable. He tried it
anyway, from Victoria station. There was a silence at the other end of the line then a woman's voice said:
'You have reached the BT Cellnet answering service.'
'Hello?' said Kearney. He checked the number he had dialled 'You aren't on a cellphone,' he said.
'This isn't a cellphone number Hello?' The silence at the other end spun itself out. In the very distance, he
thought, he could hear something like breath. 'Sprake? Nothing. He hung up and found his way down to
the Victoria Line platforms. He changed trains at Green Park, and again at Baker Street, working his
way obliquely to the centre of town, where he would interrogate the afternoon drinkers at the Lymph
Club on Greek Street, one place he might expect to get news of Sprake.
Soho Square was full of schizophrenics. Adrift in the care of the community with their small dirty dogs
and bags of clothes, they were brought together at sites like this by an attraction to movement, crowd,
commerce. A middle-aged woman with an accent he couldn't quite place had annexed a bench near the
mock Tudor shack at the centre of the square and was staring around with a lively but undirected
interest. Every so often her upper lip folded back and a fey, unpremeditated sound escaped her mouth,
more than an exclamation, less than a word. When Kearney appeared, walking fast from the Oxford
Street end, an educated look sprang from nowhere into her eyes and she began talking loudly to herself.
Her topics were disconnected and various Kearney hurried past, then on an impulse turned back.
He had heard words he didn't understand.
Kefahuchi Tract.
'What does that mean?' he said. 'What do you mean by that?
Mistaking this for an accusation, the woman fell silent and stared at the ground near his feet. She had
on a curious mixture of good quality coats and cardigans; green wellington boots; home-made fingerless
mitts. Unlike the others she had no baggage. Her face, tanned by exhaust fumes, alcohol and the wind
that blows incessantly around the base of Centre Point, had a curiously healthy, rural look. When she
looked up at last, her eyes were pale blue. 'I wonder if you could spare me the money for a cup of tea?'
she said.
'I'll do more than that,' Kearney promised. 'Just tell me what you mean.'
She blinked.
'Wait here!' he told her, and at the nearest Pret bought three All Day Breakfasts, which he put in a bag
with a classic latte. Back in Soho Square, the woman hadn't moved, but sat blinking into the weak