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

irrational as the madmen who could no longer live with the thought of
their deaths, and had to be removed to psychiatric units on the mainland.
One night, over coffee, Maitland decided that he had heard enough. He
threw down his napkin and cleared his throat. The dozen residents at the
table, the people Maitland considered to be the hard-core of the hospice's
strange religious movement, until now debating among themselves, fell
silent and stared at him. They sensed his long-awaited contribution to the
discussion.
"There is," Maitland said, "no reason for what we have. It's a freak, an
accident, a cellular mutation. We are just as likely to be disciples of
the Devil as we are to be the chosen ones of your God. In my opinion we
are neither."
Later, as he stood by the French windows and watched the sun fall behind
the oaks across the river, he sensed someone beside him. "But how can you
continue, Mr Maitland? How do you manage to live from day to day if you
believe in nothing?"
Maitland could not reply, and retired to his room. He often wondered the
same thing himself.

Summer gave way to Autumn, and the sunsets beyond the stand of oak turned
the golden leaves molten. Maitland struck up an acquaintance with a fellow
resident, a retired major who bored him with stories of his army life. The
only reason Maitland tolerated his company was because he played a
passable game of chess, and they would spend the long Autumn afternoons in
the library, intent on the chequered board between them. They rarely
spoke; that is, they rarely conversed. Maitland tried to ignore the
major's monologues, for he was contemplating - in contrast to the old
soldier's full and eventful life - the arid years of his own brief
existence to date, his time at university, both as a student and later as
a lecturer, and the missed opportunities he told himself he did not
regret, but which, of course, he did.
The major's going came about on the third week of their acquaintance. The
old man had been complaining of headaches and tiredness for two days, and
his concentration had often wandered from the game. Maitland realised what
this meant, and he was unable to say whether he was shocked by the fact of
the Major's approaching death, or at the realisation, for the first time,
that his own life too would end like this.
On the third day the major did not arrive, and Maitland sat alone by the
window, his white pawn advanced to queen's four in futile anticipation of
the challenge.
He took to playing chess against himself in the empty afternoons that
followed the major's death. Winter came early that year, impinging on the
territory that the calendar claimed still belonged to Autumn. Maitland
found it too cold to enjoy his walks; the wind from the sea was bitter,
and it often rained.
He appeared a lonely figure in the library, bent over the chessboard,
apparently rapt in concentration but often, in reality, devising for
himself an alternative set of events with which he wished he had filled
his life. He repulsed all offers to challenge him, not with harsh or
impolite words, but with a silent stare that frightened away would-be