"Lucifer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

Roger Zelazny. Lucifer

Carlson stood on the hill in the silent center of the city whose people
had died.
He stared up at the Building--the one structure that dwarfed every
hotel-grid, skyscraper-needle, or apartment-cheesebox packed into all the
miles that lay around him. Tall as a mountain, it caught the rays of the
bloody sun. Somehow it turned their red into golden halfway up its height.
Carlson suddenly felt that he should not have come back.
It had been over two years, as he figured it, since last he had been
here. He wanted to return to the mountains now. One look was enough. Yet
still he stood before it, transfixed by the huge Building, by the long
shadow that bridged the entire valley. He shrugged his thick shoulders then,
in an unsuccessful attempt to shake off memories of the days, five (or was
it six?) years ago, when he had worked within the giant unit.
Then he climbed the rest of the way up the hill and entered the high,
wide doorway.
His fiber sandals cast a variety of echoes as he passed through the
deserted offices and into the long hallway that led to the belts.
The belts, of course, were still. There were no thousands riding them.
There was no one alive to ride. Their deep belly-rumble was only a noisy
phantom in his head as he climbed onto the one nearest him and walked ahead
into the pitchy insides of the place.
It was like a mausoleum. There seemed no ceiling, no walls, only the
soft _pat-pat_ of his soles on the flexible fabric of the belt.
He reached a junction and mounted a cross-belt, instinctively standing
still for a moment and waiting for the forward lurch as it sensed his
weight.
Then he chuckled silently and began walking again.
When he reached the lift, he set off to the right of it until his
memory led him to the maintenance stairs. Shouldering his bundle, he began
the long, groping ascent.
He blinked at the light when he came into the Power Room. Filtered
through its hundred high windows, the sunlight trickled across the dusty
acres of machinery.
Carlson sagged against the wall, breathing heavily from the climb.
After awhile he wiped a workbench clean and set down his parcel.
Then he removed his faded shirt, for the place would soon be stifling.
He brushed his hair from his eyes and advanced down the narrow metal stair
to where the generators stood, row on row, like an army of dead, black
beetles. It took him six hours to give them all a cursory check.
He selected three in the second row and systematically began tearing
them down, cleaning them, soldering their loose connections with the
auto-iron, greasing them, oiling them and sweeping away all the dust,
cobwebs, and pieces of cracked insulation that lay at their bases.
Great rivulets of perspiration ran into his eyes and down along his
sides and thighs, spilling in little droplets onto the hot flooring and
vanishing quickly.
Finally, he put down his broom, remounted the stair and returned to his
parcel. He removed one of the water bottles and drank off half its contents.