"Simon R. Green - Nightside 1 - Drinking Midnight Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

rank exorcists did their best, with gallons of holy water and top-class cross action, and got
absolutely nowhere. So Jimmy got the call, on the grounds that while the Vatican certainly wasn't
prepared to accept that he was a god, he could at least be relied on to bring a whole new
perspective to the problem. Jimmy had expressed surprise that the Vatican had even heard of him.
The Holy Father had smiled and said, 'The Vatican has heard of everybody, Mister Thunder.'
(Jimmy had sorted it out, mostly by asking questions and knowing when he was being lied to. It
turned out that the Pope had forgotten someone's birthday. As a reward, Jimmy was allowed access
to the Vatican's secret library for a whole afternoon and an evening, to browse where he pleased.
The really dangerous books were kept under lock and key and were chained to the shelves, or in
extreme cases immersed in holy water or kept in a vacuum inside a sealed vault, but he still
managed to turn up some interesting stuff. Not necessarily useful, but interesting. The Gospel
According to Judas Iscariot was a real eye-opener, though the Fourth Prophecy of Fatima turned out
to be just what everyone thought it was.
(The one story Jimmy was really interested in remained stubbornly elusive. There were no records,
and no one would talk to him about it. Which only convinced him all the more that there had to be
something to it. It was common knowledge that Vatican scientists had been experimenting with
computers and Artificial Intelligence for over fifty years, though they kept their achievements to
themselves. No one would admit that there had been any success in creating an AI, but it was said
that deep in the heart of the Vatican there was a room where no one went, where the door was
always locked. And that if you could find your way to that abandoned room, and put your ear to
that locked door, you would hear the sound of something crying...
(There are many mysteries inside the Vatican, and only some of them have anything to do with
Christianity.)
Jimmy drank the last of the very hot sweet tea, flicked the cup a few times to empty it and then
screwed it back onto the Thermos. He'd only half filled the Thermos, anyway. Bad idea to drink too
much on a stake-out, especially when you didn't know how long you'd have to hold your ground. He
put the Thermos down on the roof beside him and leaned back against the chimney stack, which
shifted slightly under his great weight. Stretched out before him lay the sleeping town, still and
quiet now, just an army of street lights pushing back the darkness. There was the tower and spire
of Trinity Church, and beyond it row upon row of terraced houses and cottages, ascending the steep
hills that enclosed the town - ordinary people sleeping in their ordinary town, all's quiet, all's
well. But that was just in Veritie.
In the magical world, every bit as clear to Jimmy Thunder's semi-divine eyes, the town was never
quiet. Bradford-on-Avon was an old, old locality, littered with all the remnants of the past. The
very old creature that lived Under the Hill stirred restlessly, as though it could feel the
thunder god's gaze, and deeper still, things and shapes and presences out of times past slept and
dreamed down among the bones of the town. On the last day, when the earth gives up its dead for
judgement, many of those buried in Bradford-on-Avon's cemeteries will be surprised to find out who
some of their neighbours have been.
Old buildings flickered in and out of sight, ghosts of the town that was. Pale figures sat glumly
at the base of the old gallows in the Bull Pit, swapping hard-luck stories and old, old claims of


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innocence, while in the park next to Westbury House, old soldiers guarded the war memorial, and
made rude comments about the new pale green Millennium Statue in the gardens opposite. From the
River Avon came undine songs of unbearable melancholy, sometimes drowned out by the terrible cry
of the Howling Thing, still imprisoned in the Chapel on the Bridge. Powers and Dominations sat at