"Kim Stanley Robinson - A History Of The Twentieth Century2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

of Birsay riven by whitecaps, more white than blue. The car rocked on its shock absorbers. The sun had
finally slid sideways into the sea, but clearly it was going to be a long blue dusk. When the water was
boiling he poured in a dried Knorr's soup and stirred it, put it back on the flame for a few more minutes,
then killed the flame and ate, spooning split pea soup straight from the steaming pot into his mouth. Soup,
bit of cheese, bit of salami, red wine from a tin cup, more soup. It was absurdly satisfying to make a meal
in these conditions: the wind was in a fury! When he was done eating he opened the car door and put
away his dinner gear, then got out his windbreaker and rain pants and put them on. He walked around
the carpark, and then up and down the low cliffy edges of the point of Buckquoy, watching the North
Atlantic get torn by a full force gale. People had done this for thousands of years. The rich twilight blue
looked like it would last forever. Eventually he went to the car and got his notebooks. He returned to the
very tip of the point, feeling the wind like slaps on the ear. He sat with his legs hanging over the drop, the
ocean on three sides of him, the wind pouring across him, left to right. The horizon was a line where
purest blue met bluest black. He kicked his heels against the rock. He could see just well enough to tell
which pages in the notebooks had writing on them; he tore these from the wire spirals, and bunched them
into balls and threw them away. They flew off to the right and disappeared immediately in the murk and
whitecaps. When he had disposed of all the pages he had written on he cleared the long torn shreds of
paper out of the wire rings, and tossed them after the rest.
It was getting cold, and the wind was a constant kinetic assault. He went back to the car and sat in the
passenger seat. His notebooks lay on the driver's seat. The western horizon was a deep blue, now. Must
be eleven at least. After a time he lit the candle and set it on the dash. The car was still rocking in the
wind, and the candle flame danced and trembled on its wick. All the black shadows in the car shivered
too, synchronized perfectly with the flame. He picked up a notebook and opened it. There were a few
pages left between damp cardboard covers. He found a pen in his daypack. He rested his hand on the
page, the pen in position to write, its tip in the quivering shadow of his hand. He wrote, "I believe that
man is good. I believe we stand at the dawn of a century that will be more peaceful and prosperous than
any in history." Outside it was dark, and the wind howled.
┬й Kim Stanley Robinson 1991, 1999 This story first appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction
Magazine in 1991 and is reprinted in the collection, Remaking History and other stories (Orb, 1994).