"George R. R. Martin - With Morning Comes Mistfall (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

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GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
With Morning
Comes Mistfall

if you could go to Loch Ness tomorrow and prove or disprove conclusively the
existence of the monster, would you? Should you? When all the questions are
answered, when all the superstitions are stilled, when science has unraveled
all the mysteries, what will we do? Would you want to live in such a time?
Would we be able to live then?
I was early to breakfast that morning, the first day after landing. But
Sanders was already out on the dining balcony when I got there. He was
standing alone by the edge, looking out over the mountains and the mists.
I walked up behind him and muttered hello. He didn't bother. to reply.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he said, without turning.
And it was.
Only a few feet below balcony level the mists rolled, sending ghostly
breakers to crash against the stones of Sanders's castle. A thick white
blanket extended from horizon to horizon, cloaking everything. We could see
the summit of the Red Ghost, off to the north; a barbed dagger of scarlet rock
jabbing into the sky. But that was all. The other mountains were still below
mist level.
But we were above the mists. Sanders had built his hotel atop the
tallest mountain in the chain. We were floating alone in a swirling white
ocean, on a flying castle amid a sea of clouds.
Castle Cloud, in fact. That was .what Sanders had named the place. It
was easy to see why.
"Is it always like this?" I asked Sanders, after drinking it all in for
a while.
"Every mistfall," he replied, turning toward me with a wistful smile. He
was a fat man, with a jovial red face. Not the sort who should smile
wistfully. But he did.
He gestured toward the east, where Wraithworld's sun rising above the
mists made a crimson and orange spectacle of the dawn sky.

"The sun," he said. "As it rises, the heat drives the mists back into
the valleys, forces them to surrender the mountains they've conquered during
the night. The mists sink, and one by one the peaks come into view. By noon
the whole range is visible for miles and miles. There's nothing like it on
Earth, or anywhere else."
He smiled again, and led me over to one of the tables scattered around
the balcony. "And then, at sunset, it's all reversed. You must watch mist rise
tonight,"
he said. j
We sat down, and a sleek robowaiter came rolling a out to serve us as
the chairs registered our presence. Sanders ignored it. "It's war, you know,"