"Paul J. McAuley - Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

a
smile that indicated that he certainly didn't believe such nonsense.
"It's true enough," the woman said proudly. "The seventh daughter of a
seventh daughter."
"Well," Tolley said, amused. Surely, here was a fine example of that
famous English eccentricity. "It's kind of you to invite me to your
home.
But I didn't catch your name?"
"Beaumont. Gregory and Marjory." The man stuck out his hand, and Tolley
shook it. "You best be getting on," Gerald Beaumont told him.
"It's not a good place to stay after dark," his wife added.
They watched as Tolley fitted himself into his rental car and awkwardly
turned it in the narrow road, stalling once, because he wasn't used to
the
stick shift, before he was off, the pair and their dog dwindling down
the
perspective of hedgerows in the rearview mirror. "Not a good place to
be
after dark," Tolley said to himself, smiling: superstition and religion
had no place in his world. After all, he'd done his thesis work, and
 subsequently published a book (which had gotten him his tenure) on the
influence of the Renaissance philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi, who
believed
that all phenomena could be attributed to natural causes, admitting no
miracles, no demons or angels. Of course, Pomponazzi hadn't dared take
the
next logical step, which was to eliminate God, but it seemed to Tolley
that the light of science had penetrated every corner of the Universe,
right down to the buzzing wavicles of fundamental particles, without
any
evidence of an Epicurean creator overseeing all. And as for ghosts . .
.
well, Steven Spielberg was welcome to make millions from films about
them,
but that was as far as their reality went.
Tolley found the turn and steered the car, its springs complaining,
down
the rough, unsurfaced track, which ended in a space of long grass with
trees on one side and an unkempt hedge on the other. Tolley switched
off
the motor and clambered out. He could hear water running somewhere in
the
distance, and the lonely winter sound of rooks hoarsely calling across
bare fields. The car motor, cooling, ticked behind him.
There was a gate in the hedge, sagging on its posts and held shut with
a
loop of orange twine. With the feeling that he was trespassing, Tolley
lifted the loop and pushed through. Beyond was a wide, rough meadow, on
the left bounded by a copse of bare trees, on the right sloping down
toward the river, presumably the Cherwell. Ahead was an embankment,