"Paul McAuley - The Book of Confluence 01 - Child of the River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

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light. The Constable scanned the river, ignoring flaws in the
old glass of the lenses which warped or smudged the amplified
light, and saw, half a league from the skiff, a knot of tiny,
intensely brilliant specks dancing above the river's surface.
"Machines, " the Constable breathed. He stepped between
the prisoners and pointed out the place to his sons.
The skiff glided forward under the Constable's guidance.
As it drew closer, the Constable saw that there were hundreds
of machines, a busy cloud swirling around an invisible pivot.
He was used to seeing one or two flitting through the sky
above Aeolis on their inscrutable business, but he had never
before seen so many in one place.
Something knocked against the side of the skiff, and Urthank
cursed and feathered his oar. It was a waterlogged
coffin. Every day, thousands were launched from Ys. For a
moment, a woman's face gazed up at the Constable through
a glaze of water, glowing greenly amidst a halo of rotting
flowers. Then the coffin turned end for end and was borne
away.
The skiff had turned in the current, too. Now it was broadside
to the cloud of machines, and for the first time the
Constable saw what they attended.
A boat. A white boat riding high on the river's slow
current.
The Constable took off his spectacles, and discovered that




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the boat was glimmering with a spectral luminescence. The
water around it glowed too, as if it floated in the center of
one of the shoals of luminous plankton that sometimes rose
to the surface of the river on a calm summer night. The glow
spread around the skiff-, each stroke of the oars broke its
pearly light into whirling interlocking spokes, as if the ghost
of a machine lived just beneath the river's skin.
The tongue-cut trader groaned and coughed; his partner
raised himself up on his elbows to watch as the white boat
turned on the river's current, light as a leaf, a dancer barely
touching the water.
The boat had a sharp, raised prow, and incurved sides that
sealed it shut and swept back in a fan, like the tail of a dove.
It was barely larger than an ordinary coffin. It made another