"Monica Hughes - Devil On My Back" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Monica)

he yelled. "Where are you?"
A waterbird flapped noisily out of the reeds and set his heart pounding. Then there was silence.
He looked all round, and with a swoop of despair realized that he had been staring at his own footprints.
He had walked in a complete circle. Yet he had never left the shoreline. He was not on the bank of the
river leading north to ArcOne, but on an island.
He began to run, following his previous footsteps, stumbling over hidden roots and broken
branches. When the sun was full on his face he stopped and looked at the water. It flowed past his feet
from left to right, and there, maybe a couple of hundred meters away, was the true shore.
He had no food. No fire. No way of getting to shore. His knees gave way and he dropped to the
ground. Maybe it would have been better if Seventy-Three had left him to have his throat cut. It would
have been a quicker death than starvation.
Beyond the island's rim the water moved smoothly, like a loom full of finest synthetic. A bird
perched on a stone above the water and dunked its head, fluffed up its wings and flew off. For an instant
he found he was smiling. The bird was so small, so impertinent, to use the great river for its bath.
 Tomi began to get angry. I am fourteen years old, he told himself, or the empty river or the island,
I am the New Lord of Bentt. I have accessed more knowledge than any of the other Young Lords. Its
stupid to die now. I won't die. "I won't," he shouted.
He scrambled to his feet and looked at his island. It was perhaps a hundred meters long and half
as wide, though the irregular shoreline had made it seem larger at first. It was not very high. The central
hill, on which stood a clump of trees, was no more than ten meters above the river level. The land close
to the shore, now a tangle of scrub, reeds and washed-up timber, was probably under water every
spring.
There seemed to be nothing actually living on the island, though birds roosted in the central clump
of trees. He crossed and then recrossed it a few meters further on, searching the scrub for something to
eat or something that might be useful to him.
Two-thirds of the way along he found a bramble thicket laden with purple black berries. He
reached out and one of them fell plumply into his palm at the touch. It was delicious, sweet and tangy, full
of juice. He squatted by the thicket and methodically stripped off the berries until his stomach felt
satisfied. Then he went on.
By the time he had reached the downstream point of the island he had found nothing else that
seemed useful. Unless a person could eat grass or leaves? If the worst came to the worst he could try
them. Now his stomach was full be could more cheerfully face the fact that he could not live on the island.
That he must find a way of getting off or die of starvation.
Knowledge is powerтАФhis infopak reminded him.
"Yes, I know. Tell me what to do?" he asked, but there was no answer. Why should there be?
He had to ask first. He sat on a fallen tree and methodically accessed all of his great store of information:
ancient history, engineering, story, myth, mathematics, and he asked: "How do you cross a fast river
when you are unable to swim and there is no bridge?"
His paks gave him many answers from Bridges, suspension, to Bridges, pontoon. From
Outrigger, Canoe, Kayak, to Raft, inflatable, and Raft, balsawood. He lingered on the last suggestion and
asked for more information.
Balsawood, his wordpak told him, was a tropical South American tree with a very light strong
wood. Well, he was not likely to find any balsawood trees here. Light and strong... He idly broke a dry
branch from the tree where he sat and tossed it into the water. It dipped under, bobbed up and was
borne rapidly along on the current.
Suppose he were to gather all the long straight pieces of wood he could find and tie them
together in a kind of mat... Tie them with what? Access again: Rope, grass. Rope, hemp. Rope,
synthetic. Synthetic. If he could tear his toga into strips they would certainly be strong enough. He was
strangely reluctant to destroy his mother's gift, but he tugged at the loose end. It was far too tightly
woven. With a knife or scissors, perhaps... but he had neither.