"Robert F. Young - The Last Yggdrasill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

THE RULES OF THE GAME
"My insurance provides triple indemnity for whoever does the actual treework. The clause becomes
effective the moment he begins a tree, remains in effect till he finishes it, and stipulates that he remain in
the tree throughout that time. Ordinarily that doesn't pose much of a problem. Only very rarely have we
encountered jobs that required more than a day. The biggest tree we ever felled only took two. We
figure four days for this one, but even so, Tom will only have to spend three nights in it, and he'll have a
tree tent to sleep in and a portable campfire to keep him warm." She winked at Strong. "And if the Good
Fates please, a dryad to keep him company . . ."

In Scandinavian mythology the great evergreen ash, Yggdrasill, was the tree of life and knowledge,
the tree of grief and fate, the tree of time and spaceтАФthe tree of the universe: It had three roots. One of
them extended down into Niflheim and one stretched to Joturdieim. The third emerged in Asgard, near
the fountain of Urd, where the gods sat in judgment and to which they rode daily over the Bifrost Bridge
of the rainbow.

A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright ┬й 1982 by Robert F. Young
All tights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States
by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada, Limited, Toronto, Canada.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-22840 ISBN 0-345-304209
Printed in Canada
First Edition: May 1982
Cover art by Michael Herring

Prologue
Come, my sisters, let us bring our journey to an end and settle here. The land is vast and the
soil is rich and the terrain is ideal. And there are dwellers.
But, Xtil, are the dwellers amenable to our needs?
Yes. They are a simple folk. See the mud huts in which they live?
But, Xtil, they will not remain simple.
No, but they will remain so for a long time. We must take advantage of that time. We are the
last of our kind, and it will avail us nothing to look farther. . . . Come, let us become our other
selves. Let us know the rush of the wind and the warmth of the sun and the sweetness of the rain.
Xtil, we are afraid.
Do not be. All beings must someday die. Come, let us live while we can as we were meant to
live!
Yes, XtilтАФyes!
Spread out then, my sisters, and be free!


I
Yggdrasill astralis
Habitat: NW New America, Plains (Genji 5)
Population: 1

You were always aware of the tree's presence, even when you turned your back on it and walked to
the very outskirts of the village that encircled it, even when you walked miles out into the vast fields of
wheat that encircled the village like an inland sea. When you stood in the village square, as Strong stood