"Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

books when there was no room on the shelves themselves for the square toes of my
small brown shoes, and occasionally kicking books to the floor where they remained
until out next visit and beyond, evidence of the staff's reluctance to climb that long,
coiled slope.
The upper shelves were, if anything, in worse disorder than those more,
conveniently located, and one glorious day when I attained the highest of all I found
occupying that lofty, dusty position (besides a misplaced astronautics text, The Mile-
Long Spaceship, by some German) only a lorn copy of Monday or Tuesday leaning
against a book about the assassination of Trotsky, and a crumbling volume of Vernor
Vinge's short stories that owed its presence there, or so I suspect, to some long-dead
librarian's mistaking the faded V. Vinge on the spine for "Winge".
I never found any books of my father's, but I did not regret the long climbs to the
top of the dome. If David had come with me, we raced up together, up and down the
sloping floor--or peered over the rail at Mr Million's slow progress while we debated
the feasibility of putting an end to him with one cast of some ponderous work. If
David preferred to pursue interests of his own farther down I ascended to the very top
where the cap of the dome curved right over my head; and there, from a rusted iron
catwalk not much wider than one of the shelves I had been climbing (and I suspect
not nearly so strong), opened in turn each of a circle of tiny piercings--piercings in a
wall of iron, but so shallow a wall that when I had slid the corroded cover plates out
of the way I could thrust my head through and feel myself truly outside, with the wind
and the circling birds and the lime-spotted expanse of the dome curving away beneath
me.
To the west, since it was taller than the surrounding houses and marked by the
orange trees on the roof, I could make out our house. To the south, the masts of the
ships in the harbor, and in clear weather--if it was the right time of day--the
whitecaps of the tidal race Sainte Anne drew between the peninsulas called First
Finger and Thumb. (And once, as I very well recall, while looking south I saw the
great geyser of sunlit water when a star-crosser splashed down.) To east and north
spread the city proper, the citadel and the grand market and the forests and mountains
beyond.
But sooner or later, whether David had accompanied me or gone off on his own,
Mr Million summoned us. Then we were forced to go with him to one of the wings to
visit this or that science collection. This meant books for lessons. My father insisted
that we learn biology, anatomy, and chemistry thoroughly, and under Mr Million's
tutelage, learn them we did--he never considering a subject mastered until we could
discuss every topic mentioned in every book catalogued under the heading. The life
sciences were my own favorites, but David preferred languages, literature, and law;
for we got a smattering of these as well as anthropology, cybernetics, and psychology.
When he had selected the books that would form our study for the next few days
and urged us to choose more for ourselves, Mr Million would retire with us to some
quiet corner of one of the science reading rooms, where there were chairs and a table
and room sufficient for him to curl the jointed length of his body or align it against a
wall or bookcase in a way that left the aisles clear. To designate the formal beginning
of our class he used to begin by calling roll, my own name always coming first.
I would say, "Here," to show that he had my attention.
"And David."
"Here." (David has an illustrated Tales From the Odyssey open on his lap where
Mr Million cannot see it, but he looks at Mr Million with bright, feigned interest.
Sunshine slants down to the table from a high window, and shows the air as warm