"Gene Wolfe - Peritonitis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

the second age, and it was the time of counterpoint and dreams.
That time too passed. Of the third age what is there to say? You have
heard its story already too often. The New Mountains were mighty then,
and there came upon all who ate a fever of clean lust that wiped away
everything that had gone before. It was then--so I deem it--that the
oneness of the People was broken, never in truth to come again. For by
twos and threes and fives all but the youngest children drew apart, and
those that returned to the gatherings stayed but a little time. At that time
if at any the love-promisings that are older than the People were kept: for
many a pair dallied all a dark away, and a light too, feasting enough to
have fattened a dozen save that love kept them lean.
With the age of New Food that time ended. From the summit of each
New Mountain, grown now until they rivaled the Haunches, there broke
forth a spring; and the waters of those springs were not clear as the waters
of the Eyes are, but white, and sweet. Many a one climbed the New
Mountains then to taste of them, though they flowed less than a lifetime.
This was the fourth age, and the end of the beginning. For when those
springs died the New Mountains waned; and the Belly, which had, scarcely
noted, waxed above the Loins, withered in one dark.
Then many felt their doom upon them; this feeling was in the meat, so
it was said--but in the air as well. The World was smaller. Then came the
Sundering. Some said there was no God; and we, the Men of the Neck,
drove them for their blasphemy beyond the New Mountains toward the
Loins. Others said that the World itself was God; and these, a fierce and a
terrible people, climbed to the Face. Then did we name ourselves Men of
the Neck, but beyond our boasting we feared--for though the Men of the
Loins might drink there of impure waters, we must needs reach the Eyes
when we could eat no more without drinking, and we feared that those
above us would prevent us. A few, brave and fleet, ventured first, daring
the Spirit Forests to come to the lakes from the north, and returning by
the same troubled path. But return they did, and others after them, until
we came in time to know that those whom we feared had left all the lands
of light to dwell in the Mouth, where--they said--the waters at times
possessed a quality magical and ineffable. They spoke of the third age, and
the second and the first--all these, they said, had returned not in the meat,
but in the waters of the Mouth. With these avowals they taunted us,
flinging at us jagged stones fallen from the Teeth. But we saw that,
however fierce, they were few; and when we questioned them, shouting
from a distance, they would not reply.
It was at this time that Deepdelver's woman Singing was stolen by a
Man of the Face, and into those times I was born--yes, I saw them, with
these same eyes that behold you now, remembering them in the time I was
a child.
Deepdelver was not stronger than other men, nor swifter; and others
there were who were cleverer than he. Why then was he counted a hero
when they were not? This was the question I put to my parents; and the
answer they gave was that he had done a wonderful thing, going to
Everdark to bring back the woman he loved; but that reply was no
answer--would any other, stronger, swifter, more cunning, not have done
as Deepdelver had? No. There was in him something better than strength