"Tad Williams - Otherland 3 - Mountain of Black Glass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

Wet, terrified, with only the companionship of trench-mates _Finch_ and _Mullet_ to keep him
sane, _Paul Jonas_ seems no different than any of thousands of other foot soldiers in World War I.
But when he abruptly finds himself alone on an empty battlefield except for a tree that grows up
into the clouds, he begins to doubt that sanity. When he climbs the tree and discovers a castle in
the clouds, a woman with wings like a bird, and her terrifying giant guardian, his insanity seems
confirmed. But when he awakens back in the trenches, he finds he is clutching one of the bird-
woman's feathers.
In South Africa, in the middle of the twenty-first century, _Irene "Renie" Sulaweyo_ has
problems of her own. Renie is an instructor of virtual engineering whose newest student, _!Xabbu_,
is one of the desert Bushmen, a people to whom modern technology is very alien. At home, she is a
surrogate mother to her young brother, _Stephen_, who is obsessed with exploring the virtual parts
of the world communication network--the "net"--and Renie spends what little spare time she has
holding her family together. Her widowed father _Long Joseph_ only seems interested in finding his
next drink.
Like most children, Stephen is entranced by the forbidden, and although Renie has already
saved him once from a disturbing virtual nightclub named Mister J's, Stephen sneaks back in. By
the time Renie discovers what he has done, Stephen has fallen into a coma. The doctors cannot
explain it, but Renie is certain something has happened to him online.
American _Orlando Gardiner_ is only a little older than Renie's brother, but he is a master of
several online domains, and because of a serious medical condition, spends most of his time in the
online identity of _Thargor_, a barbarian warrior. But when in the midst of one of his adventures
Orlando is given a glimpse of a golden city unlike anything else he has ever seen on the net, he
is so distracted that his Thargor character is killed. Despite this terrible loss, Orlando cannot
shake his fascination with the golden city, and with the support of his software agent _Beezle
Bug_ and the reluctant help of his online friend _Fredericks_, he is determined to locate the
golden city.
Meanwhile, on a military base in the United States, a little girl named _Christabel Sorensen_
pays secret visits to her friend, _Mr. Sellars_, a strange, scarred old man. Her parents have
forbidden her to see him, but she likes the old man and the stories he tells, and he seems much
more pathetic than frightening. She does not know that he has very unusual plans for her.
As Renie gets to know !Xabbu the Bushman better, and to appreciate his calm good nature and
his outsider's viewpoint on modern life, she comes to rely on him more and more in her quest to


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discover what has happened to her brother. She and !Xabbu sneak into the online nightclub, Mr.
J's. The place is as bad as she feared, with guests indulging themselves in all manner of virtual
unpleasantness, but nothing seems like it could have actually physically harmed her brother until
they are drawn into a terrifying encounter with a virtual version of the Hindu death-goddess Kali.
!Xabbu is overcome, and Renie, too, is almost overwhelmed by Kali's subliminal hypnotics, but with
the help of a mysterious figure whose simulated body (his "sim") is a blank, with no features at
all, she manages to get herself and !Xabbu out of Mister J's. Before she goes offline, the figure
gives her some data in the form of a golden gem.
Back (apparently) in World War I, Paul Jonas escapes from his squadron and makes a run for
freedom through the dangerous no-man's-land between the lines. As rain falls and shells explode,
Paul struggles through mud and corpses, only to find he has crossed over into some nether-region,
stranger even than his castle dream--a flat, misty emptiness. A shimmering golden light appears,
and Paul is drawn to it, but before he can step into its glow, his two friends from the trenches