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

opponents with its freight of tragedy and regret.
One afternoon, during a storm that lashed and rattled the windows, Dr
Masters joined Maitland in the library and tried to persuade him to take
up her offer of group therapy, or at least counseling. They had experts
who could...
He wanted to ask her if they had experts who could revise his past, give
him the happiness he should have had long ago, but which had passed him
by. He stopped himself before asking this, however. He knew that he had
only himself to blame for the emptiness of his life.
Dr Masters said that she thought he should mix more with the other
residents. Didn't he know that, even now, nothing was so important or
rewarding as human relationships?
And Maitland replied that he needed nothing, and never had, of human
relationships.
One week later he met Caroline.

He noticed her first one Sunday at the evening meal. She was at the far
table by the blazing fire, and it was more than just her youth that set
her apart from the other diners; she was alive in a way that none of the
others were. Something in her manner, her movements, told Maitland that
she could not be dying. Then he experienced a sudden stab of grief as he
realised that her dynamism might be just a facade, an act to disguise her
despair.
Later it came to him - with a sweeping sense of relief - that she was
related to one of the residents and down here on a visit. Relatives came
so infrequently - like the Islanders they saw the victims of the Syndrome
as bizarre and freakish, as if the disease were some kind of curse, or
could be transmitted - that it hadn't occurred to him that this was what
she was, the daughter or grand-daughter of one of the afflicted.
She excused herself from the table and Maitland watched her leave the
room. Seconds later he saw her again through the window. She crossed the
patio and ran across the greensward towards the clifftop. She wore
moonboots, tight denims and a chunky red parka, and he guessed that she
could be no more than twenty-five. Maitland had almost forgotten what it
was like to feel such yearning, and to experience it now served only to
remind him of his wasted years and the fact of his premature death.
In the morning Maitland went for a long walk through the wind and the
rain. He returned, showered and ate lunch in his room and, feeling
refreshed and invigorated, went downstairs to the library and played
himself at chess.
In the middle of the afternoon he sensed someone beside him. He turned and
saw the young woman.
She smiled. She was dressed as she was last night, with the addition of a
yellow ski-cap pulled down over her ears, and mittens. Evidently she too
had just returned from a walk.
"Can I give you a game?" she asked, indicating the board. Despite himself,
Maitland smiled and began setting up the pieces.
They played for an hour with only the occasional comment, and then she
looked up, directly at him, and said: "You're not like the others. You've
not given in..."