"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Island of the Immortals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

тАЬThere are no tourist facilities. Just cabins for the diamond hunters.тАЭ
тАЬThere are diamond mines?тАЭ
тАЬProbably,тАЭ she said. She had become dismissive.
тАЬWhat makes it dangerous?тАЭ
тАЬThe flies.тАЭ
тАЬBiting flies? Do they carry disease?тАЭ
тАЬNo.тАЭ She was downright sullen by now.
тАЬIтАЩd like to try it for a few days,тАЭ I said, as winningly as I could. тАЬJust to find
out if IтАЩm brave. If I get scared, IтАЩll come right back. Give me an open flight back.тАЭ
тАЬNo airport.тАЭ
тАЬAh,тАЭ said I, more winningly than ever. тАЬSo how would I get there?тАЭ
тАЬShip,тАЭ she said, unwon. тАЬOnce a week.тАЭ
Nothing rouses an attitude like an attitude. тАЬFine!тАЭ I said.
At least, I thought as I left the travel agency, it wonтАЩt be anything like Laputa. I
had read GulliverтАЩs Travels as a child, in a slightly abridged and probably greatly
expurgated version. My memory of it was like all my childhood memories,
im-mediate, broken, vividтАФbits of bright particularity in a vast drift of oblivion. I
remembered that Laputa floated in the air, so you had to use an airship to get to it.
And really I remembered little else, except that the Laputans were immortal, and that
I had liked it the least of GulliverтАЩs four Travels, deciding it was for grown--ups, a
damning quality at the time. Did the Laputans have spots, moles, something like that,
which distinguished them? And were they scholars? But they grew senile, and lived
on and on in incontinent idiocyтАФor did I imagine that? There was something nasty
about them, something like that, something for grown-ups.
But I was on Yendi, where SwiftтАЩs works are not in the library. I could not
look it up. Instead, since I had a whole day before the ship sailed, I went to the
library and looked up the Island of the Immortals.
The Central Library of Undund is a noble old building full of modern
conven-iences, including book-translatomats. I asked a librarian for assistance and
he brought me PostwandтАЩs Explorations, written about a hundred and sixty years
earlier, from which I copied what follows. At the time Postwand wrote, the port city
where I was staying, An Ria, had not been founded; the great wave of settlers from
the east had not begun; the peoples of the coast were scattered tribes of shepherds
and farmers. Postwand took a rather patronizing but intelligent interest in their
stories.
тАЬAmong the legends of the peoples of the West Coast,тАЭ he writes, тАЬone
con-cerned a large island two or three days west from Undund Bay, where live the
people who never die. All whom I asked about it were familiar with the reputation of
the Island of the Immortals, and some even told me that members of their tribe had
visited the place. Impressed with the unanimity of this tale, I determined to test its
veracity. When at length Vong had finished making repairs to my boat, I sailed out
of the Bay and due west over the Great Sea. A following wind favored my
expedition.
тАЬAbout noon on the fifth day, I raised the island. Low-lying, it appeared to be
at least fifty miles long from north to south.
тАЬIn the region in which I first brought the boat close to the land, the shores
were entirely salt marsh. It being low tide, and the weather unbearably sultry, the
putrid smell of the mud kept us well away, until at length sighting sand beaches I
sailed into a shallow bay and soon saw the roofs of a small town at the mouth of a
creek. We tied up at a crude and decrepit jetty and with indescribable emo-tion, on