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

Meanwhile, the arty set's conversation had moved on, to discussing the overnight destruction of
the railway station's waiting room. Theories were flying thick and fast. The current official
explanation, of a possible gas leak, had been dismissed out of hand, on the unanswerable grounds
of being both unlikely and boring. Much more exciting was the possibility of a terrorist bomb. A
lot of Ministry of Defence people lived in Bradford-on-Avon, commuting in to the MOD centres at
Bath and Bristol. As to which terrorists - take your pick these days.
Leo listened, but kept his mouth firmly shut. He knew the Reality Express had been running last
night. He'd heard its unholy whistle sounding in the still of the night, and the roar of silver
wheels hammering down the steel tracks into town. Leo was a half-breed: a magical father and a
real mother, which meant he had a foot in both worlds and a home in neither. He lived in the real
world by choice, but sometimes his father's legacy sang in his veins, and the secrets of Mysterie
paraded themselves before him whether he wished it or not. He'd walked by the railway station on
his way to the town centre and paused a while to watch the police studying the mess from a safe
distance. There was so much magic hanging on the air that Leo could smell it, even in Veritie.
Some heavy hitters had clearly gone at it hammer and tongs somewhen in the night, and not for the
first time one of Mysterie's little wars had spilled over into reality. Leo had sniffed loudly and
moved on. He didn't approve of the Reality Express. In his experience, Veritie and Mysterie worked
best when they were kept strictly separate, an opinion for which his own existence was one of the
best arguments. Love might conquer all, but it can be hell on the offspring.
He drank his cider, kept a watchful eye on the dead man and listened with half an ear as Jason
Grant, a local author, complained loudly to the rest of the arty set about his latest project.


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Sim...side%201%20-%20Drinking%20Midnight%20Wine.txt (14 of 118) [10/16/2004 5:28:20 PM]
 file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Simon%20R.%20Green%20-%20Nightside%201%20-%20Drinking%20Midnight%20Wine.txt

'Crop circles! Bloody crop circles! I ask you, who cares about that rubbish any more? Well, all
right, somebody must, or the publishers wouldn't be paying me good money to write the bloody
thing. It's a part-work; twenty-four monthly issues guaranteed to build up into an unsightly mess
in your living room, until you're so far behind you give up and throw the lot out.'

'So why are you doing it?' said Malcolm Cragg, an artist who specialised in portraits of people's
pets, constructed from pressed flower petals.
'They found my weak spot!' Grant said glumly. 'They offered me money.'
'The unfeeling bastards!'
'Right. So: it's put a bag over its head and do it for the money, one more time. Write interesting
comments to accompany the hundreds of glossy colour photos that are the real selling point. I
mean, there just aren't that many ways to say We don't know what it is either, or what might be
causing it, but isn 't it pretty? And/or impressive? Heaven forfend we might even hint that we
wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out to be nothing more than half a dozen pissheads with
planks on their feet, shuffling about in the corn in the early hours of the morning, going, Hee
hee, I'm a Martian. God, The X-Files has a lot to answer for...'
'Oh, I like that Gillian Anderson,' said Cragg immediately. 'You've got to admire a woman who can
spout reams of scientific dialogue every week, and still make it sound as though she's talking
dirty.'
'True,' said Grant. 'And it has to be said, if it wasn't for unauthorised X-Files tie-ins, I
wouldn't be able to pay the rent some months. But crop circles have to be a new low, even for me.
You can't just say, Look at the pretty pictures, you have to talk knowledgeably about UFO landings
and wind vortices, and how there are always these strange molecular changes in the flattened
corn... I swear, much more of this and my brains are going to start dribbling out of my ears...'