"Дуглас Адамс. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" - читать интересную книгу автора

no further sound other than the soft tinkle of water.
But in the morning the suri rose with an unaccustomed sparkle on a day
that was, or seemed to be, or at least would have seemed to be if there
had been anybody there to whom it could seem to be anything at all,
warmer, clearer and brighter - an altogether tivelier day than any yet
known. A clear river ran through the shattered remains of the valley.
And time began seriously to pass.
Chapter Two...



High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse. From
under its rough woven cowl the Monk gazed unblinkingly down into another
valley, with which it was having a problem.
The day was hot, the sun stood in an empty hazy sky and beat down upon
the grey rocks and the scrubby, parched grass.
Nothing moved, not even the Monk. The horse's tail moved a little,
swishing slightly to try and move a little air, but that was all.
Otherwise, nothing moved.
The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a
video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you
the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious
television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself;
Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming
an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world
expected you to believe.
Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started
to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random.
It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty
believing in Salt Lake City. It had never heard of Salt Lake City, of
course. Nor had it ever heard of a quingigillion, which was roughly the
number of miles between this valley and the Great Salt Lake of Utah.
The problem with the valley was this. The Monk currently believed that
the valley and everything in the valley and around it, including the Monk
itself and the Monk's horse, was a uniform shade of pale pink. This made
for a certain difficulty in distinguishing any one thing from any other
thing, and therefore made doing anything or going anywhere impossible, or
at least difficult and dangerous. Hence the immobility of the Monk and the
boredom of the horse, which had had to put up with a lot of silly things
in its time but was secretly of the opinion that this was one of the
silliest.
How long did the Monk believe these things?
Well, as far as the Monk was concerned, forever. The faith which moves
mountains, or at least believes them against all the available evidence to
be pink, was a solid and abiding faith, a great rock against which the
world could hurl whatever it would, yet it would not be shaken. In
practice, the horse knew, twentyfour hours was usually about its lot.
So what of this horse, then, that actually held opinions, and was
sceptical about things? Unusual behaviour for a horse, wasn't it? An
unusual horse perhaps?