"Eric Brown - The Disciples Of Apollo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

Spring came and Maitland left the mainland on the ferry to Farrow Island.
On the crossing he attempted to determine how many of his fellow
passengers were also suffering from the Syndrome. As far as he knew there
were no outward, physical symptoms of the disease - the physiological
debilitation was taking place on a sequestered, cellular level.
Nevertheless, Maitland convinced himself that at least a dozen other
passengers, of the twenty or so aboard the ferry, were making their way to
the hospice. Their despondent postures and sapped facial expressions spoke
to him of moribund futures, bitter presents and only guilt and regret in
retrospect. He realised, as the ferry approached the island, that they
were mirror images of himself.
A car was awaiting him on the cobbled quayside of the small fishing
village. He was greeted by Dr Masters, the woman with whom he'd
corresponded.
"Aren't we waiting for the others?" he asked as he climbed into the rear
of the car.
"Others?" Dr Masters regarded him with a smile. "The other passengers are
Islanders. You are my only new resident this week."
The hospice was a sixteenth-century mansion set in wooded parkland on a
clifftop overlooking the straits. Dr Masters conducted him around the
workshops and recreation rooms, the library and dining hall. She told him
that the residents could take their meals in their rooms, if they wished,
and that the recreational facilities and group therapy sessions were
optional.
Maitland was thus reassured. The thirty or so residents he had seen so far
in the mansion had about them a collective air of apathy, as if the fact
of their ends had reached back and retroactively killed them in both body
and in mind.
In contrast, Maitland had briefly glimpsed a few lone individuals in the
grounds, striding out resolutely across the greensward, or posed in
isolation on the windy clifftop. Maitland fancied that he detected
something heroic in their lonely defiance in the face of death, and
ultimately sad and tragic also.
As the weeks passed and Spring turned gradually to Summer, Maitland
imposed his own routine on the identical days that stretched ahead to the
time of his death in the New Year.
He would rise early and breakfast alone in the hall before setting out on
a walk around the island that would often take him three or four hours. He
would speak to no one, not because he wished to be rude or uncivil, but
because no one ever spoke to him. He was a stranger on the island and
therefore an 'inmate' up at the mansion, and the locals viewed the victims
of the Syndrome with suspicion, sometimes even hostility.
He would take lunch in his room and eat it slowly, sometimes taking an
hour to finish. Then he would sit by the window and read, or listen to the
radio, until the gong announced the evening meal at seven.
This meal he did take with the other residents in the main hall, though he
rarely joined in the conversation, which he found inane and self-pitying.
There were constant debates as to the reason for the disease, and the only
conclusion ever arrived at by the residents was that they were the chosen
ones of their God, Apollo. These people, in Maitland's opinion, were as