"Tad Williams - Otherland 1 - City of Golden Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

Besides, there was always hope, wasn't there?
He began weeping once more.
Above, the wounded man stopped screeching for a moment to cough. He sounded like a dog being
whipped. Paul leaned his head back against the mud and bellowed: "Shut it! Shut it, for Christ's
sake!" He took a deep breath. "Shut your mouth and _die,_ damn you!"
Apparently encouraged by companionship, the man resumed screaming.

Night seemed to last a year or more, months of darkness, great blocks of immovable black. The
guns sputtered and shouted. The dying man wailed. Paul counted every single individual object he
could remember from his life before the trenches, then started over and counted them again. He
remembered only the names of some of them, but not what the names actually meant. Some words
seemed impossibly strange--"lawn chair" was one, "bathtub" another. "Garden" was mentioned in
several songs in the Chaplain's hymn book, but Paul was fairly certain it was a real thing as
well, so he counted it.



file:///F|/rah/Tad%20Williams/Otherland%201%20-%20City%20of%20Golden%20Shadow.txt (4 of 368) [8/28/03 12:39:49 AM]
 file:///F|/rah/Tad%20Williams/Otherland%201%20-%20City%20of%20Golden%20Shadow.txt

_"Try to think about getting out,"_ the yellow-eyed man had said. _"About really getting
out."_
The guns were silent. The sky had gone a slightly paler shade, as though someone had wiped it
with a dirty rag. There was just enough light for Paul to see the edge of the trench. He clambered
up and then slid back, laughing silently at the up-and-down of it all. _Getting out._ He found a
thick root with his foot and heaved himself onto the rim of the earthwork. He had his gun. He was
going to kill the man who was screaming. He didn't know much more than that.
Somewhere the sun was coming up, although Paul had no idea where exactly that might be
happening: the effect was small and smeared across a great dull expanse of sky. Beneath that sky,
everything was gray. Mud and water. He knew the water was the flat places, so everything else was
mud, except perhaps for the tall things. Yes, those were trees, he remembered. Had been trees.
Paul stood up and turned in a slow circle. The world extended for only a few hundred yards in
any direction before ending in mist. He was marooned in the center of an empty space, as though he
had wandered onto a stage by mistake and now stood before a silent, expectant audience.
But he was not entirely alone. Halfway across the emptiness one tree stood by itself, a
clawing hand with a twisted bracelet of barbed wire. Something dark hung in its denuded branches.
Paul drew his revolver and staggered toward it.
It was a figure, hanging upside down like a discarded marionette, one leg caught in the high
angle of bough and trunk. All its joints seemed to have been broken, and the arms dangled
downward, fingers reaching, as though muck were heaven and it was struggling to fly. The front of
its head was a tattered, featureless mass of red and scorched black and gray, except for one
bright staring yellow eye, mad and intent as a bird's eye, which watched his slow approach.
"I got out," Paul said. He lifted his gun, but the man was not screaming now.
A hole opened in the ruined face. It spoke. _"You've come at last. I've been waiting for
you."_
Paul stared. The butt of the gun was slippery in his fingers. His arm trembled with the effort
of keeping it raised.
"Waiting?"
_"Waiting. Waiting so long."_ The mouth, empty but for a few white shards floating in red,
twisted in an upside-down smile. _"Do you ever get the feeling. . . ?"_