"Gene Wolfe - Long Sun 3 - Calde Of The Long Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

Quetzal rose, and an observer (had there been one) might have
been more than a little surprised to see that shrunken figure grown
so tall. As if on wheels, he glided across the room and threw open
the broad casement that overlooked his garden. admitting pounding
rain and a gust of wind that made his mulberry robe stand out
behind him like a banner.
For some while he remained before the window, motionless,
cosmetics streaming from his face in rivulets of pink and buff, while
he contemplated the tamarind he had caused to be planted there
twenty years previously. It was taller already than many buildings
called lofty; its glossy, rain-washed leaves brushed the windowframe
and now even, by the width of a child's hand, sidled into his
bedchamber like so many timid sibyls, confident of welcome yet
habitually shy. Their parent tree, nourished by his own efforts, was
of more than sufficient size now, and a fount of joy to him: a
sheltering presence, a memorial of home, the highroad to freedom.
Quetzal crossed the room and barred the door, then threw off his
sodden robe. Even in this downpour the tree was safer, though he
could fly.

The looming presence of the cliff slid over Auk as he sat in the bow,
and with it a final whistling gust of icy rain. He glanced up at the
beetling rock, then trained his needler on the augur standing to the
halyard. "This time you didn't try anything. See how flash you're
getting?" The storm had broken at shadeup and showed no signs of
slackening.
Chenille snapped, "Steer for that," and pointed. Chill tricklings
from her limp crimson hair merged into a rivulet between her full
breasts to flood her naked loins.
At the tiller, the old fisherman touched his cap. "Aye, aye,
Scaldin' Scylla."
They had left Limna on Molpsday night. From shadeup to
shadelow, the sun had been a torrent of white fire across a dazzling
sky; the wind, fair and strong at morning, had veered and died away
to a breeze, to an occasional puff, and by the time the market
closed, to nothing. Most of that afternoon Auk had spent in the
shadow of the sail, Chenille beneath the shelter of the half deck; he
and she, like the augur, had gotten badly sunburned just the same.
Night had brought a new wind, foul for their destination.
Directed by the old fisherman and commanded to hold ever closer
by the major goddess possessing Chenille, they had tacked and
tacked and tacked again, Auk and the augur bailing frantically on
every reach and often sick, the boat heeling until it seemed the
gunnel must go under, a lantern swinging crazily from the masthead
and crashing into the mast each time they went about, going out half
a dozen times and leaving the three weary men below in deadly fear
of ramming or being rammed in the dark.
Once the augur had attempted to snatch Auk's needler from his
waistband. Auk had beaten and kicked him, and thrown him over
the side into the churning waters of the lake, from which the old