"Watson-TheAmberRoom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

forever comb the hair of the tom, gently or roughly? All the air of the world
was akin to the skin of a body, ceaselessly rippling and flexing sweating or
shivering. Air is a vast living organ, though a mindless one.

Surely no one could fall from such a dreamy sky? Surely no one could plunge to
earth, and die?

In due course, I took up hang-gliding passionately. Presently I was equipped
with a degree in engineering aerodynamics a speciality. Passion became
profession. With Max Palmer as partner I rounded a fledgling company to design
and build new high-performance hang-gliders: craft with wider spans and nose
angles, with tighter sails and more battens to camber the roached trailing edges
of the airfoil (to be technical for a moment).

Maxburn Airfoils combined Max's first name with my surname, suggesting flying
feats at the leading edge of possibility. Max Palmer and Peter Burn: two aces.
It was financial backing from Max's family which allowed us to set up, thus his
name preceded mine. The company fledged and soared. We even carried out some
design consultancy work for NASA, honey upon the bread and butter of our regular
manufacturing. Usually I wore Gran-Annie's bead as a pendant around my neck
instead of a tie.

Surely no one could fall.

Until I fell in love -- or in lust -- with Max's Isabelle. Until Isabelle -until
Amber -- fell.

A hang-glider pilot aims to see the invisible. He or she watches wind. At first,
to do so, he throws dry grasses. He kicks dust. He eyes the flutter of a ribbon,
the ripple of tree-tops, the progress of smoke and clouds. Eventually, for a few
of us, an extra perception is born.

As a boy a premonition of this perception showed me the words of wind written
upon the fields. In the ghastly wake of Isabelle's death impassioned perception
took me to Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast in search of the lost room of amber
-- the lost room of Amber herself. I'd begun to dream of finding that room, and
my lost love within it.

An entire room wrought of amber!

Gran-Annie first told me the tale. The central luminary of my dreams was a
sphere of smoldering amber, so naturally I was enthralled. I concocted various
boyish adventure fantasies about finding the room. But it was only after
Isabelle died that I began to dream repeatedly of doing so in an airborne
context. The room had bizarrely replaced the crop circles. Mountains replaced
fields as a setting.

My German grandmother had been dead for five years, but I soon reacquainted
myself with all the details of the story.