"Christopher Rowe - Another Word for Map is Faith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowe Christopher)

we won't see anything along the lake bed but mud and whatever garbage they've thrown in off their
docks. The lake doesn't have any secrets to give up. You know that."

"Ford's booksтАФ"

"Ford's books are by anthropologists, who are halfway to being witch doctors as far as most respectable
scholars are concerned, and who keep their accreditation by dint of the fact that their field notes are
good intelligence sources for the Mission Service. Ford reads them because he's got an overactive
imagination and he likes stories too muchтАФlots of students in the archive concentration have those
failings. Most of them grow out of it with a little coaxing. Like Ford will, he's too smart not to. Just like
you're too smart to backslide into your parentsтАЩ religion and start looking for souls to save where there
are no souls to be found."

Carmen took a deep breath and held it, closed her eyes. When she opened them, her expression had
folded into acquiescence. тАЬIt is not the least of my sins that I force you to spend so much time counseling
me, Reverend,тАЭ she said formally.

Sandy smiled and gave the girl a friendly squeeze of the shoulder. тАЬCuriosity and empathy are healthy,
and valuable, se├▒orita,тАЭ she said. тАЬBut you need to remember that there are proper channels to focus
these things into. Prayer and study are best, but drinking and carousing will do in a pinch."

Carmen gave a nervous laugh, eyes widening. Sandy could tell that the girl didn't feel entirely comfortable
with the unexpected direction of the conversation, which was, of course, part of the strategy for handling
backsliders. Young people in particular were easy to refocus on banal and harmless тАЬsinsтАЭ and away
from thoughts that could actually be dangerous.

"Fetch the others up here, now,тАЭ Sandy said. тАЬWe should set to it."

Carmen soon had all twenty of her fellow students gathered around Sandy. Lucas had been down the
eastern slope far enough to gather some deadwood and now he struck it ablaze with a flint and steel from
his travel kit. Sandy crumbled a handful of incense into the flames.

Ford had been named the seminar's lector by consensus, and he opened his text. тАЬBlessed are the
Mapmakers...тАЭ he said.

"For they hunger and thirst after righteousness,тАЭ they all finished.

Then they all fell to prayer and singing. Sandy turned her back to themтАФcongregants more than students
nowтАФand opened her heart to the land below her. She felt the effrontery of the unmapped lake like a
caul over her face, a restriction on the land that prevented breath and life.

Sandy showed them how to test the prevailing winds and how to bank the censers in chevrons so that the
cleansing fires would fall onto the appropriate points along the dam.

Finally, she thumbed an ashen symbol onto every wrist and forehead, including her own, and lit the oils of
the censer primorus with a prayer. When the hungry flames began to beam outward from her censer, she
softly repeated the prayer for emphasis, then nodded her assent that the rest begin.

The dam did not burst in a spectacular explosion of mud and boulders and waters. Instead, it atrophied
throughout the long afternoon, wearing away under their prayers even as their voices grew hoarse.