"Robert Reed - Beyond the Veil of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

windows and tall turrets, with vast porches wrapped around their waists. Dad, who
believed in ghosts when it suited him, claimed that a lot of the oldest homes were
filled with spirits. People had died inside them in olden times. Babies died at birth,
and their mothers died bearing them. Machinery and horses had mangled the grown
men. Extinct illnesses wiped out entire families. Even a simple scratched finger could
become infected, killing an inch at a time. "Someday I'll study ghosts and their
haunting," Dad would claim. "What are they? Residual energies? Intrusions from
another dimension? Or authentic souls in their afterlife?" A pause and a little smile,
then he added, "Whatever they are, don't they make a lovely mystery?" And Pete
would say, "They're not lovely to me." Pete was driving, today and always. Dad had
troubles behind the wheel, too cautious and perpetually flustered; and that's why he
sat in the front passenger seat, a map opened on his lap, his title being Navigator. Yet
he had a poor sense of direction, at best. Even simple maps seemed to confuse him.
Besides, Pete was a wonderful driver, steady and rock-calm, and he needed nobody's
help. He could find any address in any of four or five states, never a wrong move in
all these years; and Cornell respected him almost as much as he loved his father.
"Ghosts don't appeal to me," Pete said, as always. A grumpy growl, a little smile
of his own. Then he added, "Not in the least little bit."
"But what if they're related to our work?" Dad responded. "What if they're
different manifestations of the same grand puzzle?"
"Who cares?" Pete picked up his coffee cup and took a last cold sip, then bit the
white foam, nibbling off pieces and spitting them out again. His habit was to gnaw
each cup down as far as possible, filling it with itself, then dumping the remains into
the little trash sack hung on the dash. "If you're planning to chase spooks," he warned,
"you're on your own. I mean it."
"Now, Pete."
"I mean it."
"Well ..."
This was an ancient conversation, much practiced and done with an emotional
flatness. Sometimes it made Cornell angry: why couldn't they use new words, at
least? Then other days it was a comfortable collection of familiar sounds, reliable and
lightly humorous. Like today, Pete claiming, "The dead can keep their secrets, I think.
I think. I think we'll get our answers soon enough, and why rush?"
"You're not curious?" Dad teased.
"No, I'm not."
"Scared then?"
"Damn well terrified." And Pete seemed like a man incapable of fear. He was
powerfully built, particularly through the chest and arms, dark whiskers on a square
face and dark eyes staring straight ahead. Even the way he held the steering wheel
seemed fearless. That's what Cornell was thinking. This was the day of the Change,
though he didn't know it; he was sitting in the backseat, feeling happy, watching the
cornfields and bean fields and the planted trees between them, everything bending
under a hot dry wind. This was flat country for now, a river somewhere on their left
and not more than a couple of farmsteads visible at once. They came here last year,
Cornell recalled, visiting a different farm and an old woman who'd seen odd lights.
Living with the old woman was an ancient, humpbacked creature-her grandmother,
Cornell had learned-and she was more than a century old, toothless and almost blind.
Yet her memories were intact. With Cornell sitting near her, she spoke at length about
being a little girl, even younger than him, and riding in a wagon across the prairie,
seeing sunflowers beside the dirt road and the occasional white skull of a buffalo.