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

The days went by and the weather grew noticeably warmer. The beaches I could see now were white
and fringed with tall trees, tiny houses visible in the shade beyond. The reefs that protected many of the
islands were brilliantly multicolored, jagged and encrusted with shells, breaking the sea-swell into spumes
of white spray. We passed ingenious harbors and large coastal towns clinging to spectacular hillsides,
saw pluming volcanoes and rambling, rock-strewn mountain pastures, skirted islands large and small,
lagoons and bays and river estuaries.

It was common knowledge that it was the people of the Dream Archipelago who had caused the war,
though as you passed through the Midway Sea the peaceful, even dreamy aspect of the islands
undermined this certainty. The calm was only an impression, an illusion borne of the distance between
ship and shore. To keep us alert on our long southerly voyage the army mounted many compulsory
shipboard lectures. Some of these recounted the history of the struggle to achieve armed neutrality in
which the islands had been engaged for most of the three millennia of the war.

Now they were by consent of all parties neutral, but their geographical locationтАФthe Midway Sea
girdled the world, separating the warring countries of the northern continent from their chosen battlefields
in the uninhabited southern polar landтАФensured that military presence in the islands was perpetual.

I cared little for any of that. Whenever I was able to get away to the upper deck I would stare in rapt
silence at the passing diorama of islands. I tracked the course of the ship with the help of a torn and
probably out-dated map I had found in a ship's locker and the names of the islands chimed in my
consciousness like a peal of bells: Paneron, Salay, Temmil, Mesterline, Prachous, Muriseay, Demmer,
Piqay, the Aubracs, the Torquils, the Serques, the Reever Fast Shoals, and the Coast of Helvard's
Passion.

Each of these names was evocative to me. Reading the names off the map, identifying the exotic
coastlines from fragments of cluesтАФa sudden rise of sheer cliffs, a distinctive headland, a particular
bayтАФmade me think that everywhere in the Dream Archipelago was already embedded in my
consciousness, that somehow I derived from the islands, belonged in them, had dreamed of them all my
life. In short, while I stared at the islands from the ship I felt my artistic sensibilities reviving. I was startled
by the emotional impact on me of the names, so delicate and suggestive of unspecified sensual pleasures,
out of key with the rest of the coarse and manly existence on the ship. As I stared out across the narrow
stretches of water that lay between our passing ship and the beaches and reefs I would quietly recite the
names to myself, as if trying to summon a spirit that would lift me up, raise me above the sea and carry
me to those tide-swept strands.

Some of the islands were so large that the ship sailed along parallel with their coastlines for most of the
day, while others were so small they were barely more than half-submerged reefs which threatened to rip
at the hull of our elderly ship.

Small or large, all the islands had names. As we passed one I could identify on my map I circled the
name, then later added it to an ever-growing list in my notebook. I wanted to record them, count them,
note them down as an itinerary so that one day I might go back and explore them all. The view from the
sea tempted me.

There was only one island stop for our ship during that long southward voyage.

My first awareness of the break in our journey was when I noticed that the ship was heading towards a
large industrialized port, the installations closest to the sea seemingly bleached white by the cement dust