"Robert Charles Wilson - Julian- A Christmas Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robert Charles)

Here the remnants of last night's snow had been blown into windrows and small dunes, and all
evidence of hoofprints had been erased. But I rode slowly, knowing I was close to my destination. I was
buoyed by the observation that Julian's pursuer, whoever he was, had not returned this way from his
mission: had not, that is, taken Julian captive, or at least had not gone back to Williams Ford with his
prisoner in tow. Perhaps the pursuit had been suspended for the night.

It was not longтАФthough it seemed an eternity, as Rapture short-stepped down the frozen road,
avoiding snow-hidden pitfallsтАФbefore I heard the whickering of another horse, and saw a plume of
smoke rising into the moon-bright sky.

Quickly I turned Rapture off the road and tied his reins to the low remnants of a concrete pillar, from
which rust-savaged iron rods protruded like skeletal fingers. I took my squirrel rifle from the saddle
holster and moved toward the source of the smoke on foot, until I was able to discern that the fumes
emerged from a deep declivity in the landscape, perhaps the very dig from which the Tipmen had
extracted THE HISTORY OF MANKIND IN SPACE. Surely this was where Julian had gone to wait
for Sam's arrival. And indeed, here was Julian's horse, one of the finer riding horses from the Estate
(worth more, I'm sure, in the eyes of its owner, than a hundred Julian Comstocks), moored to an outcrop
. . . and, alarmingly, here was another horse as well, not far away. This second horse was a stranger to
me; it was slat-ribbed and elderly-looking; but it wore a military bridle and the sort of cloth bibтАФblue,
with a red star in the middle of itтАФthat marked a mount belonging to the Reserves.

I studied the situation from behind the moon-shadow of a broken abutment.

The smoke suggested that Julian had gone beneath ground, down into the hollow of the Tipmen's dig,
to shelter from the cold and bank his fire for the night. The presence of the second horse suggested that
he had been discovered, and that his pursuer must already have confronted him.

More than that I could not divine. It remained only to approach the contested grounds as secretively
as possible, and see what more I could learn.

I crept closer. The dig was revealed by moonlight as a deep but narrow excavation, covered in part
with boards, with a sloping entrance at one end. The glow of the fire within was just visible, as was the
chimney-hole that had been cut through the planking some yards farther down. There was, as far as I
could discern, only one way in or out. I determined to proceed as far as I could without being seen, and
to that end I lowered myself down the slope, inching forward on the seat of my pants over ground that
was as cold, it seemed to me, as the wastelands of the Arctic north.

I was slow, I was cautious, and I was quiet. But I was not slow, cautious, or quiet enough; for I had
just progressed far enough to glimpse an excavated chamber, in which the firelight cast a kaleidoscopic
flux of shadows, when I felt a pressure behind my earтАФthe barrel of a gunтАФand a voice said, "Keep
moving, mister, and join your friend below."

***

I kept silent until I could comprehend more of the situation I had fallen into.

My captor marched me down into the low part of the dig. The air, if damp, was noticeably warmer
here, and we were screened from the increasing wind, though not from the accumulated odors of the fire
and the stagnant must of what had once been a basement or cellar in some commercial establishment of