"David Wingrove - Chung Kuo 5 - Beneath the Tree of Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wingrove David)

February 1995

10 987654321

BVG




for Peter Hammill, in admiration.

Senses dimmed in semisentience, only wheeling through this plane, only seeing fragmented images,
prematurely curtailed by the brain, but breathing, living, knowing in some measure at least the soul which
roots the matter of both beauty and the beast. . . .
House of Ch'in built the Wall to keep them apart,

House of Han has to keep the beacons alight,

Beacons alight and they never go out

For these expeditions have never an end:

In the line, hand to hand, they'll die the same,

The horses will fall, call to Heaven their pain,

The crows and the kites pick their riders' guts

And fly to dead trees with the bits in their beaks.. . .

тАФLi Po, We Fought South of the Walls,
EIGHTH CENTURY A.D.




Life is cheap, flesh plentiful.
тАФCOMMON SAYING, 2210 A.D.




Acknowledgments
Thanks, as ever, gotomy editors, for their patience and continuing enthusiasm: to Carolyn Caughey at
NEL (for saying no), to Jeanne Cavelos at Dell (another fan-turned-editor), and to Alyssa Diamond
(super-mum and editor!) and John Pearce at Doubleday (Canada). Also to my ex-editors, Brian DeFiore
and Nick Sayers, good friends both.

For thoughtful readings of early drafts (and for beer and friendship), I have to thank Vikki Lee France and