"Zach Hughes - The Book of Rack the Healer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

He received warning vibrations, for he was treading on dangerous
ground. But he plunged on. "Perhaps the Old Ones penetrated the
surface?"

There was sadness in the answer, not anger.

"It is conceivable. For the Old Ones died, did they not?"

In truth, the Old Ones had died and left behind old legends and nothing
more.

In the final days the bodies of the Old Ones covered the Earth.


So were the thoughts of Rose the Healer marred by impossible
statements, making the total credence of his thoughts less than reliable,
for no planet, however young and fruitful, could support so much life. On
all the continent the Eastern Group Establishment was the largest
concentration of the Material known and at peak production periods in
the summer it was the most populous. The picture showed Power Givers
in a grouping equal to the number of digits on Rack's left hand, a paired
group of Far Seers, and rock-weighted Healers diving in the thick water.
The whole group numbered no more than the digits on Rock's hands and
horny feet.

If only, Rack lamented, the Far Seers had not erased the old thoughts. If
only they had saved more than just the beautiful thoughts of Rose the
Healer—what a delightful concept his name evoked, a confused mental
image of something delicate and bright and beautiful. But only Rose was
whole in the minds of the Keepers.

Rack's only other source of information on the Old Ones was an
occasional misfiled tidbit. The discovery of these excited Rack wildly. He
had found mention of a sunken city in the mind of a northern Keeper, a
city in the eastern sea that towered to the sky. An unknown Healer far
back in antiquity had been the source of the reference which had been
filed with readings of air purity at the tops of various mountains. And on
the western sea, a group of Healers told of another city of the Old Ones
they had heard of, a city that spread over what was now the plains of glass
in Red Earth's area beside the great river. There was even a name for this
lost city, but the name was difficult to conceive, for it suggested no known
image.

"Could it be," Rack had asked, "that the Old Ones truly knew
civilization and constructed establishments?"

"I think," said a young, visionary Healer, "that question is answered by
the picture of city."

He had not truly considered what the image implied. City. A group of