"Ian R. MacLeod - Tirkiluk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

met
at Godalming made no sense, either. Odd to think that many of us are scattered
across the Arctic in solitary huts now, or freezing and rocking through the
storms on some tiny converted trawler. Of the two -- and after my experience
of
the Queen of Erin, and the all pervading reek of rancid herring -- I think I'm
glad I was posted on dry ground.
Frank Cayman looked healthy enough, anyway, apart from that frostbitten nose.
But he was so very quiet. Not subdued, but just drawn in on himself. Was
impressed at the start with how neat he's left everything here, but now I can
see that there is no other option. You have to be organized.

Evening, August 9th

My call-sign response from Godalming is Capella, that bright G-type sister of
the sun. It means, as I expected, that Kay Alexander is my Monitoring Officer.
Funny to think of her, sitting there with her headphones in that drafty hut by
the disused tennis courts, noting down these bleeps I send out on the cypher
grid. An odd kind of intimacy: without speech transmissions, and with usually
just a curt coded reply of Message Received (no point in crowding the
airwaves).
Find that I'm re-reading the two requests I've received for more specific
cloud
data, as though Kay would do anything more than encode and relay them, chewing
her pencil and pushing back strands of red hair.

Too late for regrets now. And at the moment I miss the stars more than the
people, to be honest. Even at midnight, the sky is so pearly bright that I can
barely make out the major constellations. But that will change.

Evening, August 12th

A great bull seal came up onto the beach this morning as I was laying out my
washing on the rocks to dry. Whiskered, with huge battle-scarred tusks, he
really did look like something out of Lewis Carroll. Think we both saw each
other at about the same time. He looked at me, and I looked at him. I stumbled
back toward the hut, and. he turned at speed and lumbered back into the waves.
I'm not sure which of us was more frightened.

Evening, August 30th

Really must record what I get up to each day.

I'm usually awake at 7:30, and prime the stove and breakfast at eight. Slop
out
afterward, then read from my already dwindling supply of unread books until
nine. After that, I have to go out and read the instruments. Twelve-hour wind
speed, direction, min and max temperature, air pressure, precipitation, cloud
height and formation, visibility, sea conditions, frequency and size of any
sighted icebergs -- have to do this here at the hut, and then halfway up the