"Robert Onopa - Area Seven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Onopa Robert)

I held the keys to the noblest heart

Of all the lords. Envy turned all against me,

Envy was the start.

He had been regent and it was said of him that he knew his lordтАЩs mind even before his master did. The
old inner circle grew jealous, whispered of his complicity with a rival faction, ties to an exiled
commander. They had him arrested.

Once in the damp prison, he was tortured. When he would not reveal his lordтАЩs battle plans, they took a
fine hot wire and pierced his eyes. The pain, he said, was inexpressible.

Locked in his cold cell, without even a cord to hang himself by, he marshaled his strength and began to
beat his head against the wall. He beat and fell, and rose and beat again, crushing his skull against the
stone until he felt nothing, saw nothing, and heard nothing at all.

I swear, that never in word or spirit did I,

Peter of the Vine, break faith with my lord.

Oh traveler, vindicate my memory!

I remembered him from Dante! Pier della Vigne, Peter of the Vine!

It moves me even now to think that, though many there had ended their lives out of shame, or cowardice,
many others had done so in a search for honor or in pursuit of relief from unfathomable pain. Yet they all
shared the punishment by the means I saw before my eyes, and pain inhabited every shape. How could I
understand their sin? A failing in each of them, a turning away from life, from the heart of things? Story
after story suggested it, each half fairy tale, half tragic history, life stories from a fantastic world of lost
beings.

I was aware I was running out of time from the visuals I was getting from Tessa on my helmet array. In
the end, I toggled down even that display, listening to my own breathing and the hypnotizing voices of the
figures before me.
***


I donтАЩt know what broke the spell-the light on the horizon, rising voices, TessaтАЩs insistent calls on the
override com circuit. At some point I toggled the skiff back online, but only to silence the suit alarm.

тАЬSerge, we are listing emergency event. Please respond. Repeat. Emergency event. Planetary rotation
critical and dangerous. Repeat. Emergency event. Your life support numbers are degrading and surface
timeтАЩs approaching terminus. Repeat, Serge, surface terminus. This is urgent. Whatever minutes youтАЩve
got, when you see the sun, the tempтАЩs going to exceed your suitтАЩs cap. Please respond.тАЭ

I swayed, fought for balance, as the blue world seemed to spin around me. My experience had shriven
my soul-now my own problems seemed inconsequential, my own depression trivial and self-indulgent. I
felt I had been granted a vision, but would I be able to make sense of it?