"China Mieville - Details" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mieville China)

angles, in our view, in plain sight.
"I had studied and sought, and learnt, finally, to see. It was time to
learn truths.
"I opened my eyes fully, for the first time.
"I had chosen an old wall. I was looking for the answer to some
question that I told you I can't even remember now, but the question
wasn't the main thing. That was the opening of my eyes.
"I stared at the whole mass of the bricks. I took another glance,
relaxed my sight. At first I couldn't stop seeing the bricks as bricks,

file:///H|/eMule/Incoming/China%20Mieville%20-%20Details.html (10 of 22)13-8-2005 23:44:36
China Mieville - Details


the divisions as layers of cement, but after a time they became pure
vision. And as the whole broke down into lines and shapes and
shades, I held my breath as I began to see.
"Alternatives appeared to me. Messages written in the pockmarks.
Insinuations in the forms. Secrets unraveling. It was bliss.
"And then without warning my heart went tight, as I saw something.
I made sense of the pattern.
"It was a mess of cracks and lines and crumbling cement, and as I
looked at it, I saw a pattern in the wall.
"I saw a clutch of lines that looked just like somethingтАж terribleтАж
something old and predatory and utterly terribleтАж staring right back
at me.
"And then I saw it move."
"You have to understand me," she said. "Nothing changed. See? All
the time I was looking I saw the wall. But that first moment, it was
like when you see a face in the cloud. I just noticed in the pattern in
the brick, I just noticed something, looking at me. Something angry.
"And then in the very next moment, I justтАж I just noticed another
load of linesтАФcracks that had always been there, you understand?
Patterns in broken brick that I'd seen only a second beforeтАФthat
looked exactly like that same thing, a little closer to me. And in the
next moment a third picture in the brick, a picture of the thing closer
still.
"Reaching for me."
"I broke free then," she whispered. "I ran away from there in terror,
with my hands in front of my eyes and I was screaming. I ran and

file:///H|/eMule/Incoming/China%20Mieville%20-%20Details.html (11 of 22)13-8-2005 23:44:36
China Mieville - Details


ran.
"And when I stopped and opened my eyes again, I had run to the
edges of a park, and I took my hands slowly down and dared to look
behind me, and saw that there was nothing coming from the alley
where I'd been. So I turned to the little snatch of scrub and grass and