"Kim Stanley Robinson - Years of Rice and Salt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

They ride by fields that lay rank with unharvested crops. Barley fallen over itself,
Apple trees with apples dry in the branches, Or black on the ground. No cart tracks
or hoof prints or footprints In the dust of the road. Sun sets, The gibbous moon
misshapen overhead. Owl dips over field. A sudden gust: How big the world seems
in a wind. Horses are tense, Monkey too.

They came to an empty bridge and crossed it, hooves thwocking the planks. Now
they came upon some wooden buildings with thatched roofs. But no fires, no
lantern light. They moved on. More buildings appeared through the trees, but still
no people. The dark land was empty.

Psin urged them on, and more buildings stood on each side of the widening road.
They followed a turn out of the hills onto a plain, and before them lay a black silent
city. No lights, no voices; only the wind, rubbing branches together over sheeting
surfaces of the big black flowing river. The city was empty.

Of course we are reborn many times. We fill our bodies like air in bubbles, and
when the bubbles pop we puff away into the bardo, wandering until we are blown
into some new life, somewhere back in the world. This knowledge had often been a
comfort to Bold as he stumbled exhausted over battlefields in the aftermath, the
ground littered with broken bodies like empty coats.

But it was different to come on a town where there had been no battle, and find
everyone there already dead. Long dead; bodies dried; in the dusk and moonlight
they could see the gleam of exposed bones, scattered by wolves and crows. Bold
repeated the Heart Sutra to himself. 'Form is emptiness, emptiness form. Gone,
gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. 0, what an Awakening! All hail!'


file:///H|/eMule/Incoming/Robinson,%20Kim%20Stanley%20-%20The%20Years%20of%20Rice%20and%20Salt.html (2 of 661)15-8-2005 0:38:45
 Robinson, Kim Stanley - The Years of Rice and Salt


The horses stalled on the outskirts of the town. Aside from the cluck and hiss of the
river, all was still. The squinted eye of the moon gleamed on dressed stone, there in
the middle of all the wooden buildings. A very big stone building, among smaller
stone buildings.

Psin ordered them to put cloths over their faces, to avoid touching anything, to stay
on their horses, and to keep the horses from touching anything but the ground with
their hooves. Slowly they rode through narrow streets, walled by wooden buildings
two or three storeys high, leaning together as in Chinese cities. The horses were
unhappy but did not refuse outright.

They came into a paved central square near the river, and stopped before the great
stone building. It was huge. Many of the local people had come to it to die. Their
lamasery, no doubt, but roofless, open to the sky -- unfinished business. As if these
people had only come to religion in their last days; but too late; the place was a
boneyard. Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. Nothing moved, and