"Walter M. Miller - The Lost Masters - Volume 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

its grinтАУclear evidence that the shelter had never been invaded by wanderers. The gold incisor flickered
when the fire danced high.
More than once in the desert had Brother Francis encountered, near some parched arroyo, a small
heap of human bones, picked clean and whitening in the sun. He was not especially squeamish, and one
expected such things. He was, therefore, not startled when he first noticed the skull in the corner of the
antechamber, but the flicker of gold in its grin kept catching his eye while he pried at the doors (locked or
stuck) of the rusty lockers and tugged at the drawers (also stuck) of a battered metal desk. The desk
might prove to be a priceless find, if it contained documents or a small book or two that had survived the
angry bonfires of the Age of Simplification. While he kept trying to open the drawers, the fire burned low;
he fancied that the skull began emitting a faint glow of its own. Such a phenomenon was not especially
uncommon, but in the gloomy crypt, Brother Francis found it somehow most disturbing. He gathered
more wood for the fire, returned to jerk and tug at the desk, and tried to ignore the skullтАЩs flickering grin.
While a little wary yet of lurking Fallouts, Francis had sufficiently recovered from his initial fright to realize
that the shelter, notably the desk and the lookers, might well be teeming with rich relics of an age which
the world had, for the most part, deliberately chosen to forget.
Providence had bestowed a blessing here. To find a bit of the past which had escaped both the
bonfires end the looting scavengers was a rare stroke of luck these days. There was, however, always a
risk involved. Monastic excavators, alert for ancient treasures, had been known to emerge from a hole in
the ground, triumphantly carrying a strange cylindrical artifact, and thenтАУwhile cleaning it or trying to
ascertain its purposeтАУpress the wrong button or twist the wrong knob, thereby ending the matter without
benefit of clergy. Only eighty years ago the Venerable Boedullus had written with obvious delight to his
Lord Abbot that his small expedition had uncovered the remains of, in his own words, тАЬthe site of an
intercontinental launching pad, complete with several fascinating subterranean storage tanks.тАЭ No one at
the abbey ever knew what the Venerable Boedullus meant by тАЬintercontinental launching pad,тАЭ but the
Lord Abbot who had reigned at that time sternly decreed that monastic antiquarians must; on pain of
excommunication, avoid such тАЬpadsтАЭ thenceforth. For his letter to the abbot was the last that anyone ever
saw of the Venerable Boedullus, his party, his тАЬlaunching padтАЭ site, and the small village which had grown
up over that site; an interesting lake now graced the landscape where the village had been, thanks to
some shepherds who diverted the course of a creek and caused it to flow into the crater to store water
for their flocks in time of drought. A traveler who had come from that direction about a decade ago
reported excellent fishing in that lake, but the shepherds thereabouts regarded the fish as the souls of the
departed villagers and excavators; they refused to fish there because of BoтАЩdollos, the giant catfish that
brooded in the deep.
тАЬ...nor shall any other excavation be initiated which does nor have as its primary purpose
the augmentation of the Memorabilia,тАЭ the Lord AbbotтАЩs decree had addedтАУmeaning that Brother
Francis should search the shelter only for books and papers, not tampering with interesting hardware.
The gold-capped tooth kept winking and glittering at the corner of his eye while Brother Francis
heaved and strained at the desk drawers. The drawers refused to budge. He gave the desk a final kick
and turned to glare impatiently at the skull: Why donтАЩt you grin at something else for a change?
The grin remained. The gold-toothed residuum lay with its head pillowed between a rock and a
rusty metal box. Quitting the desk, the novice picked his way across the debris at last for a clever
inspection of the mortal remains. Clearly, the person had died on the spot, struck down by the torrent of
stones and half buried by the debris. Only the skull and the bones of one leg had not been covered. The
femur was broken, the back of the skull was crushed.
Brother Francis breathed a prayer for the departed, then very gently lifted the skull from its resting
place and turned it around so that it grinned toward the wall. Then his eye fell on the rusty box.
The box was shaped like a satchel and was obviously a carrying case of some kind. It might have
served any number of purposes, but it had been rather badly battered by flying stones. Gingerly he
worked it loose from the rubble and carried it closer to the fire. The lock seemed to be broken, but the
lid had rusted shut. The box rattled when he shook it. It was not an obvious place to look for books or