"Mark W. Tiedemann - Miserond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiedemann Mark W)

"Are they any clearer now?"
"What were your reasons for coming here?"
"Several. For one, I'm a Living History. I represent a period in time and I'm traveling into the future to do exactly that. Also I have a decision to make. Choices."
"A decision that takes centuries to make? What will you do when you make it?"
Gil shrugged. "Finish what needs finishing."
"I'd rather not go back, but if I had a choice in the matter I'd like to go back when no one and nothing can remember the name Ivelor and the things that have attached to it. My life is caught up in repetition and I want it to end. I want to be no one." He turned to Gil. "Jesca Rimin is being recalled because she requested it."
"When?"
"Quite some time agoЧtime on the outside. In fact, the last request was the sixth. She's been granted the request each time. I'm here to find out why she has never emerged."
Gil laughed.
"It's not amusing," Ivelor said.
"Of course it is. If she requested it she'd be gone. She isn't."
"We have the record. In fact, we have a record of the day the both of you left."
"We didn't leave, though. We're both still here."
Ivelor nodded. "That's why I'm here. To find out why you're still here." Ivelor smiled quietly. "So why are you still here?"
Gil pointed through the transparency. "That direction lies the hole. If you stepped through the portal into the gravity well you would fall forever. Your body might well disintegrate at once, but how long might a thought last?" He pointed to the other side. "That way lies reality, what is commonly called the true world. But truth is what we say it is." He leaned against the wall. "My friend died. She was my best friendЧmy truth. We made the universe real for each other. We agreed on that, told each other that, and said that without each other the universe would not be worth inhabiting. And she died."
"You had a death pact?"
"Yes. It seems like a simple thing, too. One dies, the other follows. But to where? I've always prided myself on being a rationalist. If reality exists only at the event horizon of the conscious mind, then death is the abnegation of reality. But if reality persists after death, then either consciousness continues orЕ" He swallowed and laughed nervously. "The question is, follow her to where?"
"Does it matter?"
Gil stared at the far bulkhead until Ivelor cleared his throat quietly. "So," Gil said, "when is she supposed to go back?"
"At the next portal."
"You won't like it here. Nothing much happens for a long, long time." He laughed. "Of course, when things do happen they are odd. It's an extreme environment to say the least. We're traveling so close to the speed of light that it might as well be CЧwe call it CЧ and if we slow down too much we risk the entire structure crumbling into the Hole. We have to slow down to receive shipments from the monitor ring and it can get strange in here." He leaned toward Ivelor conspiratorially. "You can see ghosts sometimes. Walls swap sides, you get left and right confused, there's some debate about the cohesion of the ring fabric. All very technical, very interesting, and very scary." He chuckled and walked away. "See you around."
"Citares."
Gil stopped at the hatch.
"We do have a record. You came out of the main ring, got to the monitor ring, and went back. Who was your friend and when did she die?"
Gil stepped through the hatch.


Jesca waited impatiently at Gil's door. He watched her on the monitor, hands behind her back, bobbing on her toes. She had pressed the bell twice now. Gil set his box aside. Where was Ivelor?
She rang again and he opened the door.
She stepped just within the threshold. Her fingers curled up, almost fists. Gil shuddered.
"You made the request," she said.
Gil drew his lower lip between his teeth and stared up at her. He wanted to keep his expression neutral, as close to innocent as possible, but the twisting ache of deception worked at him.
Her anger was cut by bafflement.
"Let me talk to IvelorЧ" he began, rising suddenly to his feet.
"Talk to him about what?"
"Letting you stay. If that's what you want."
"I'm not sure. If I left would you come with me?"
"Do you want me to?"
She nodded.
"I'll follow. After you've leftЧ"
"We don't know how time connects up Out There, Gil. If you follow me a day later you don't know if I'll even be alive. I might be a century dead. Would you come with me?"
"I can't."
The door sounded again. Gil glanced at his monitor and saw Ivelor waiting. He stabbed the button.
Ivelor entered and looked from Gil to Jesca, back to Gil.
"It's almost time," he said.
"No!" Jesca said.
"Ivelor," Gil said, "you shouldn't stay. It would be best for you to go back with her."
"That's not possible."
"Anything's possible, especially now. LookЧ"
"Neither of you are listening. I don't want to leave."