"Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years Of Rice And Salt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

think He would have let me ride to the end.' And he had stared at Bold with that vivid gaze of his, one
eye slightly higher and larger than the other, just like in the dream. Although in life his eyes had been
brown.
Hunger kept Bold hunting. Temur, though a hungry ghost, no longer had to worry about food; but Bold
did. All the game ran south, down the valleys. One day, high on a ridge, he saw water, bronze in the
distance. A large lake, or sea. Old roads led him over another pass, down into another city.

Again, no one there was alive. All was motionless and silent. Bold wandered down empty streets,
between empty buildings, feeling the cold hands of pretas running down his back.

On the central hill of the city stood a copse of white temples, like bones bleaching in the sun. Seeing
them, Bold decided that he had found the capital of this dead land. He had walked from peripheral towns
of rude stone to capital temples of smooth white marble, and still no one had survived. A white haze filled
his vision, and through it he stumbled up the dusty streets, up onto the temple hill, to lay his case before
the local gods.
On the sacred plateau three smaller temples flanked a large one, a rectangular beauty with double rows
of smooth columns on all four sides, supporting a gleaming roof of marble tiles. Under the eaves carved,
figures fought, marched, flew and gestured in a great stone tableau depicting the absent people, or their
gods. Bold sat on a marble drum from a longtoppled column and stared up at the carving in stone, seeing
the world that had been lost.

Finally he approached the temple, entered it praying aloud. Unlike the big stone temples in the north, it
had been no place of congregation in the end; there were no skeletons inside. Indeed it looked as if it had
been abandoned for many years. Bats hung in the rafters, and the darkness was lanced by sunbeams
breaking through broken rooftiles. At the far end of the temple it looked as if an altar had been hastily
erected. On it a single candlewick burned in a pot of oil. Their last prayer, flickering even after they had
died.

Bold had nothing to offer by way of sacrifice, and the great white temple stood silent above him. 'Gone,
gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond! 0 what an awakening! All hail!' His words echoed hollowly.

He stumbled back outside into the afternoon glare, and saw to the south the blink of the sea. He would
go there. There was nothing here to keep him; the people and their gods too had died.

A long bay cut in between hills. A harbour at the head of the bay was empty, except for a few small
rowing boats slapping against the waves, or upturned on the shingle beach stretching away from the
docks. He did not risk the boats, he knew nothing about them. He had seen Issyk Kul and Lake Qinghai,
and the Aral, Caspian and Black Seas, but he had never been in a boat in his life, except for ferries
crossing rivers. He did not want to start now.

No traveller seen on this long road,

No boats from afar return for the night. Nothing moves in this dead harbour.

On the beach he scooped a handful of water to drink spat it out it was salty, like the Black Sea, or the
springs in the Tarim Basin. It was strange to see so much waste water. He had beard there was an ocean
surrounding the world. Perhaps he was at the edge of the world, the

western edge, or the southern. Possibly the Arabs lived south of this sea. He didn't know., and for the
first time in all his wandering, he had the feeling that he had no idea where he was.