"Christopher Priest - The Discharge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

was there that the fighting was taking place. All battles had been fought in the south for nearly three
thousand years. It was a vast, uncharted land of tundra and permafrost, buried in ice at the pole. Apart
from a few outposts along the coast, it was uninhabited except by battalions.
I was assigned to a mess-deck below the waterline, already hot and stinking when we boarded, soon
crowded and noisy as well.

I withdrew into myself, while sensations of life coursed maddeningly through me. Who was I? How had I
come to this place? Why could I not remember what I had been doing even the previous day?

But I was able to function, equipped with knowledge of the world, with working ability to use my
equipment, I knew the other men in my escadron and I understood some of the aims and history of the
war. It was only myself I could not remember. For the first day, as we waited in our deck for other
detachments to board the ship, I listened in to the talk of the other men, hoping mainly for insights about
myself, but when none of those was revealed I settled instead for finding out what concerned them. Their
concerns would be mine.

Like all soldiers they were complaining, but in their case the complaints were tinged with real
apprehension. It was the prospect of the three thousandth anniversary of the outbreak of war that was
the problem. They were all convinced that they were going to be caught up in some major new offensive,
an assault intended to resolve the dispute one way or another. Some of them thought that because there
were still more than three years to go until the anniversary the war would be ended before then. Others
pointed out cynically that our four-year term of conscription was due to end a few weeks after the
millennium. If a big offensive was in progress we would never be allowed out until it was over.

Like them, I was too young for fatalism. The seed of wanting to escape from the army, to find some way
to discharge myself, had been sown.

I barely slept that night, wondering about my past, worrying about my future.



┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖



When the ship started its voyage it headed south, passing the islands closest to the mainland. Off the
coast of Jethra itself was Seevl, a long grey island of steep cliffs and bare windswept hills that blocked
the view of the sea from most parts of the city. Beyond Seevl a wide strait led to a group of islands
known as the SerquesтАФthese were greener, lower, with many attractive small towns nestling in coves
and bays around their coastlines.

Our ship passed them all, weaving a way between the clustering islands. I watched from the rail,
enchanted by the view.

As the long shipboard days passed slowly I found myself drawn again and again to the upper deck,
where I would find a place to stand and stare, usually alone. So close to home but beyond the blocking
mass of Seevl, the islands slipped past, out of reach, this endless islandscape of vivid colors and glimpses
of other places, distant and shrouded in haze. The ship ploughed on steadily through the calm water, the
massed soldiery crammed noisily within, few of the men so much as even glancing away to see where we
were.