"Learning The World" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

"No," she said. She frowned, in the way adults have when they're searching. "It isn't in memory."

"All right," I said. "I'll go and have a look."

"Good for you," she said. "I'll help you pack." So thirty minutes later I hitched my little rucksack, heavy with a litre of water and a kilo of sandwiches, onto my shoulders and set off to climb into the sky. I walked out of the estate and after a while I found a ladнder at the edge of a dense and ancient clump of trees. The ladder had been familiar to me since I was much smaller, but none of us had ever climbed more than a few score steps on it. It soared into the sky like a kite string, the kinks of its zigzag flights smoothing into a pale line and then disappearing. You couldn't easily fall off itЧit had close-spaced rings around it, and every thirty metres or so there was a small platform and another flight. The first day I climbed a kilometre, found a big platform, ate my sandwiches and drank my water, and pissed in a far corner like an untrained kitнten. I sat and watched the shadowline creep across the land towards me. It reached me in what seemed a final rush, and the sunline turned black. The land below was dim and beautiful in the farlight from the other side of the world, and within minutes lights pricked on all across that shaded scene. After a while I curled up and went to sleep. When I woke the sunline was bright again. It seemed as far away as ever, and the ground a long way below. I was just thinking of setting off back down when a crow landed on the platform, carrying a package.

"Breakfast," said the bird. "And dinner. Your ma says hi."

"Tell her thank you," I said.

"Will do," said the crow, and flew off. Crows don't have much conversation. I unwrapped the package and found, to my great delight, hot coffee and hot berry-bread for breakfast, and a fresh bottle of water and anнother pack of sandwiches for later. As I ate my breakfast I let my clothes clean me. Normally I would have washed. The clothes did a reasonable job but made my skin feel crawly and tickly. After I had eaten I chewed a tooth-cleaner and gazed around. The estate looked tiny, and I could see a whole sweep of other esнtates and towns, lakes and hills and plains, along and around. I was almost level with the tops of the slag heaps piled against the forward wall. Between me and the sunline a few clouds drifted: far away, I could see rain falling from one, onto a town. It was strange to see rain from the outside, as a distinct thing rather than a condition. More interesting was to see aircraft flying high above me, and a few below, taking off or landing. I faced resolutely upward, and continued my climb.

Of course I did not climb all the way. I was a tough and determined person, but it would have taken a month even if the ladder had extended all the way there, which it did not. What happened, about halfway through my second day, was that a small aircraft landed on a large platform a few hundred metres above me, and when I reached it, a man stood waiting for me. He even reached over and took my hand and hauled me up the last few steps, which I thought was unnecesнsary, but I made no objection. He then backed away and we looked at each other for a few seconds. He was wearing a loose black suit, and his skin was not a lot lighter. His features might have been carved out of mahogany, with deep lines scored in it around the eyes and mouth. "My name is Constantine the Oldest Man," he said. The name meant nothing to me but seemed suitable.

"Mine is Atomic Discourse Gale," I said, sitting down on the platform.

"I know," he said. "Your caremother asked me to meet you." He jerked his head back, indicating the aeroplane. "I can take you to the keel, if you like."

I had been determined to reach the keel myself; but I saw the man and the aircraft as part of my advenнture, and therefore within my resolution rather than as a weakening or dilution of it. Besides, I now had a much better idea of how long it would take to climb all the way.

"All right," I said. "Thank you."

He stepped over and peered into my eyes. I noticed a tiny shake of his head, as if something that might have been in my eyes wasn't there (a nictitating memнbrane, I now realise). He led me over to the aircraft, motioned me to sit in the front and lower seat, showed me how to strap up, and passed me a set of wrapнarounds, transparent and tinted. I slipped them on. He climbed in behind me and started the engine. The proнpeller was behind us both, the wing above. After the engine had built up some power the little machine shook and quivered, then shot to the edge of the platнform and dropped off. I may have squealed. It dipped, then soared. My stomach felt tugged about. Wind rushed past my face. The collar of my jacket crept up over the top and sides of my head, and stiffened. I hadn't known it had that capability.

We flew in an irregular spiral, perhaps to avoid stair-ladders and other obstacles invisible to me, but always up. I looked down, at the ground. I could see houses and vehicles, but not people. Other small aircraft buzzed about the sky, at what seemed frighteningly short clearances. The air felt thinner as we climbed. As we levelled out I could feel the sunline hot on my shoulders, bright out of the corners of my eyes. Ahead loomed the forward wall. Featureless from the disнtances at which I had always seen it, it now looked complex, with gigantic pipes snaking across it and great clusters of machinery clamped to it. Wheels turned and pistons and elevators moved up and down. Rectangular black slots became visible, here and there on the surface, and we flew towards one. As naively as I'd thought I could climb to the sunline, I'd imagined we would fly to it, but we flew into the slotЧit was two hundred metres wide by at least thirty highЧand landed. Other small aircraft were parked in the artificial cavern. It was in fact a hangar. Constantine helped me out of the seat. My memory may be playing tricks, but I fancy I felt slightly lighter.

"I thought we were going to fly all the way," I said, trying not to sound querulous.

"The air doesn't go all the way to the sunline," Constantine told me. "So we will take the lift."

I followed him across the broad floor to an inconнspicuous door. Behind it was an empty lift, big enough to hold about a dozen people. Its walls were transparнent, giving a view of a dark chasm within which giganнtic shapes moved vertically, illuminated by occasional random lights. The doors hissed shut and the lift began to ascend. So rapid was its acceleration that my knees buckled. Constantine grasped my shoulder.

"Steady," he said. "It doesn't get worse than carryнing someone piggyback."

Vaguely affronted, I straightened up and stared out. Looking down made me dizzy, so I looked up. The space in which we moved was in fact quite shallow in relation to its size. We were headed for a bright spot above, which I knew to be some manifestation of the sunline. The lift decelerated far more gradually and gently than it had accelerated. As it did so, I found that I was becoming lighter. An experimental downward thrust of the toes sent me a metre into the air. I yelled out, startled and delighted, as I fell back.

Constantine laughed. "Hold the bar," he said.

The lift halted, as if hesitating, then shot upward again. We passed through a hatch or hole. For a moнment I was pressed against the wall of the lift; then I found myself weightless. Constantine glided over my head, twisting and somersaulting at the same time. I let go of the bar, flailing. The sensation of falling was for a moment terrifying. My stomach heaved, then settled.

"It's all right," he said. "We're in the forward cone now." The teeth of his smile were a vivid white. He caught my elbow and swung me onto his back. I gripped fistfuls of fabric at his shoulders and clung. He grinned sideways at me and kicked off. The door of the lift hissed open. My eardrums clicked. We skimmed above the floor of a long tube. Shafts of light stabbed down from small holes or windows above us; my eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness, not darker, in truth, than indoor lighting. About three metres high by two wide, the tube ran straight into the distance as far as I could see. Within it, as we moved along, I noticed many other corridors branching off. Constantine's foot flicked at a wall and we hurtled into one of these side corridors. There was a smell of earth and ozone, of plant and animal and machine. Rapidly and bewilderingly, we passed through a succession of corridors and chambers, within which I glimpsed machinery and inнstruments, gardens hanging in midair, glowing lights and optical cables, and many people flying or floating or scuttling like monkeys along tubes or flimsy ladнders. And what strange people they were, long of limb and lithe of muscle and wild of hair. Naked as the day they were born, lots of them; or looking similar, but in bright-coloured skintight suits; others crusted with stiff sculptured garments, like the camouflage of a leaf insect, or swathed in silky balloon sleeves and pants. Their indifference to orientation was for me disorientнing; looking at their antics I felt a resurgence of unease in my belly.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again we had reached our destination. We floated near the floor of the biggest enclosed space I'd ever been in, apart from the world itself. The floor was smooth, and exнtended far ahead of us, and curved up on either hand like a smaller version of the curve of the world. Up and down had in a manner been restored. The thing that I craned my neck to look at, from my vantage on Constantine's back, was unmistakably up. Above us it vanished into shadows, ahead it stretched and tapered into distance. A thousand or more metres long, hunнdreds of metres high, it was complex, flanged, fluted and voluted, yet seemed cast from a single block of metal, ancient and pitted as an iron asteroid. There was one piece of metal, however, that shone bright and disнtinct from the rest: a metre-long rectangle of burnished brass, on which some writing was engraved. We hung in the still, rust-scented air not an arm's length from it. The inscription was as follows:


Sunliner But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky!
Forged this day 6 February 10 358 AG.
Constantine reached around and disengaged me from his back. We drifted for a few minutes, hand in hand.

"I never knew the world had a name," I said.