"Willis, Connie - Doomsday Book" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

DOOMSDAY BOOK
by
Connie Willis
1992

DEDICATION
To Laura and Cordelia-
my Kivrins



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My special thanks to Head Librarian Jamie LaRue and the rest of the staff of the Greeley Public Library for their endless and invaluable assistance.
And my undying gratitude to Sheila and Kelly and Frazier and Cee, and especially to Marta-the friends I love.



"And lest things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who are to come after us, I, seeing so many evils and the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One, being myself as if among the dead, I, waiting for death, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed.
And, lest the writing should perish with the writer and the work fail with the laborer, I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun..."
Brother John Clyn
1349










BOOK I



"What a ringer needs most is not strength but the ability to keep time...You must bring these two things together in your mind and let them rest there forever-bells and time, bells and time."

Ronald Blythe, Akenfield








CHAPTER ONE