"Gene Wolfe - The Lost Pilgrim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

The Lost Pilgrim

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe came to prominence as a writer in the late '60s with a sequence of short
stories--including "The Hero as Werewolf," "Seven American Nights," and "The Island of Doctor
Death and Other Stories"--in Damon Knight's Orbit anthologies. His early major novels were The
Fifth Head of Cerberus and Peace, but he established his reputation with a sequence of three long
multi-volume novels--The Book of the New Sun (4 vols), The Book of the Long Sun (4 vols), The
Book of the Short Sun (3 vols)--and pendant volume, The Urth of the New Sun. Wolfe has published
a number of short story collections, including The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and
Other Stories, Endangered Species, and Strange Travelers. He has won the Nebula Award and World
Fantasy Award twice, the Locus Award four times, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the
British Fantasy Award, the British SF Award, and is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award for
Lifetime Achievement. Wolfe's most recent books are collection Innocents Aboard and major new
fantasy novel The Wizard Knight. Upcoming is a new collection of science fiction stories.

In the story that follows a modern day chrononaut unexpectedly finds himself off-target, out of
step, and in the company of argonauts.

Before leaving my own period, I resolved to keep a diary; and indeed I told several others I would, and
promised to let them see it upon my return. Yesterday I arrived, captured no Pukz, and compiled no text.
No more inauspicious beginning could be imagined.

I will not touch my emergency rations. I am hungry, and there is nothing to eat; but how absurd it would
be to begin in such a fashion! No. Absolutely not. Let me finish this, and I will go off in search of
breakfast.

To begin. I find myself upon a beach, very beautiful and very empty, but rather too hot and much too
shadeless to be pleasant. "Very empty," I said, but how can I convey just how empty it really is? (Pukz
1-3)

As you see, there is sun and there is water, the former remarkably hot and bright, the latter remarkably
blue and clean. There is no shade, and no one who--

A sail! Some kind of sailboat is headed straight for this beach. It seems too small, but this could be it.
(Puk 4)

I cannot possibly describe everything that happened today. There was far, far too much. I can only give a
rough outline. But first I should say that I am no longer sure why I am here, if I ever was. On the beach
last night, just after I arrived, I felt no doubts. Either I knew why I had come, or I did not think about it.
There was that time when they were going to send me out to join the whateveritwas expedition--the little
man with the glasses. But I do not think this is that; this is something else.

Not the man getting nailed up, either.

It will come to me. I am sure it will. In such a process of regression there cannot help but be metal
confusion. Do I mean metal? The women's armor was gold or brass. Something like that. They marched
out onto the beach, a long line of them, all in the gold armor. I did not know they were women.