"Gene Wolfe - Endangered Species" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

"All right," Tim said. "I'll do it."

" 'Tis a brave lad ye are. Now I'll tell ye what I'll do. I said
a hundred years, to which ye agreed-"
Tim nodded.

"-but I'll have no unwillin' hands about me boat, nor no
ungrateful ones neither. I'll make it twenty. How's that? Sure
and I couldn't say fairer, could I?"

Daniel's figure was beginning to waver and fade; the image

of the dark mass Tim had seen first hung about it like a
cloud.

"Lay yerself on yer belly, for I must put me foot upon yer
head. Then the deal's done."

The salt ocean was in his mouth and his eyes. His lungs
burst for breath. He revolved in the blue chasm of water,
tried to swim, at last exploded gasping into the air.
The King had said he would remember, but the years were
fading already. Drudging, dancing, buying, spying, prying,
waylaying and betraying when he walked in the world of men.
Serving something that he had never wholly understood.
Sailing foggy seas that were sometimes of this earth. Floating
among the constellations. The years and the slaps and the
kicks were all fading, and with them (and he rejoiced in it)
the days when he had begged.

He lifted an arm, trying to regain his old stroke, and found
that he was very tired. Perhaps he had never really rested in
all those years. Certainly, he could not recall resting. Where
was he? He paddled listlessly, not knowing if he were swim-
ming away from land, if he were in the center of an ocean.
A wave elevated him, a long, slow swell of blue under the
gray sky. A glory-the rising or perhaps the setting sun-
shone to his right. He swam toward it, caught sight of a low
coast.

He crawled onto the sand and lay there for a time, his back
struck by drops of spray like rain. Near his eyes, the beach
seemed nearly black. There were bits of charcoal, fragments
of half-burned wood. He raised his head, pushing away the
earth, and saw an empty bottle of greenish glass nearly buried
in the wet sand.

When he was able al last to rise, his limbs were stiff and
cold. The dawnlight had become daylight, but there was no
warmth in it. The beach cottage stood only about a hundred