"Jeff VanderMeer & Cat Rambo - The Surgeon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

And then there was the library. The medical school had been built around the library, which had been
there for almost a thousand years before the school, originally as part of the magesтАЩ college. It was
common knowledge, which is to say unsubstantiated rumor, that when the library had been built
thaumaturgy had been more than just little pulses and glimpses of the fabric underlying the world. There
had been true magic, wielded by a chosen few, and no one had need of a surgeon. But none of us really
knew. Civilization had collapsed and rebuilt itself thrice in that span. All we had were scraps of history
and old leather-bound books housed in cold, nearly airless rooms to guide us.
Lucius: If we were real surgeons, we could resurrect someone. With just a little bit of magic.
Medical know-how. Magic. Magic fingers.

Me: And preservations.

Richard (another of LuciusтАЩ friends): Preservations?

Lucius: He comes from a little cottage on theтАФ

Me: ItтАЩs nothing. A joke. A thing to keep fetuses from spoiling until weтАЩve had a look at them.

Peter: What would we do with a resurrected person?

Lucius: Why, weтАЩd put him up for the city council. A dead person ought to have more wisdom than
a living one.

Me: We could maybe skip a year or two of school if we brought a dead person back.

Richard: Do you think theyтАЩd like it? Being alive again?

Lucius: They wouldnтАЩt really have a choice, would they?

Do you know what arrogance is? Arrogance is thinking you can improve on a thousand years of history.
Arrogance is trying to do it to get the best of the parents who always loved you.

Me: ThereтАЩre books in the library, you know.

Lucius: Quick! Give the man another drink. HeтАЩs fading. Books in a library. Never heard of such a
thing.

Me: No, I meanтАФ

Lucius: Next youтАЩll be telling us there are corpses in the cadaver room andтАФ

Richard: Let him speak, Lucius. He looks serious.

Me: I mean books on resurrection.

Lucius: Do tellтАж

For a project on prolonged exposure to quicksilver and aether, I had been allowed access to the oldest
parts of the libraryтАФplaces where you did not know whether the footprints shown in the dust by the light
of your shaking lantern were a year or five hundred years old. Here, knowledge hid in the dark, and you