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

It
was divided by a long, narrow island that lay in the shadow of the
railway
bridge; on the other bank were the remains of a big, square building. A
mill of some kind, Tolley guessed, for the far stream of the bisected
river dropped in a glassy rush over a weir. One wall still stood,
surrounded by a clump of scrubby trees. As Tolley framed this in his
viewfinder, it seemed that someone was standing in the shadows there, a
man with an oddly shaped head. Or no, he was wearing a top hat --
A freight train trundled around the curve and crossed the bridge with a
hollow roar, sounding a two-note horn. Tolley glanced up, then took his
photograph. But the figure, if it had ever been there, was gone.

A tumbledown farm, a string of concrete-block council houses, and then
a
cluster of picturesque cottages around a tiny village green, a church
steeple rising against the evening sky behind them. Tolley found Glebe
Cottage easily enough. He would have preferred a stiff drink to the tea
the Beaumonts had offered, but the pub was closed, and Tolley hadn't
yet
mastered the arcane English licensing laws to know when it would open.
Gerald Beaumont didn't seem surprised to see Tolley, and showed him
into
what he called the lounge, turning down, but not off, the big colour
television that was showing some old B-movie. All the strange
conversation
that followed, the television flickered and mumbled in its corner like
some idiot child.
Seated in an overstuffed armchair, Tolley began to relax, feeling like
a
fledgling cuckoo as the Beaumonts fluttered about, plying him with hot,
milky tea and a stack of biscuits and small, buttery cakes. They were
eagerly attentive to his descriptions of the States and, in particular,
of
Boston, as if he could somehow evoke their lost son. Gerald Beaumont was
a
mining engineer who had taken early retirement, and they had moved to
be
near their only child when he had been working at Oxford University;
but
 then he had become another statistic in the Brain Drain and had left
them
stranded and alone in the soft Oxfordshire countryside. To hear them
talk,
it was as if they were exiles in a foreign land.
"Well now," Gerald Beaumont said at last. "What did you think of
Steeple
Heyston?"
Tolley licked his buttery fingers; he'd eaten all the cakes and most of
the cookies (no, he remembered, biscuits). "You were right when you