"ChinaMieville-PerdidoStreetStation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mieville China)

C H I N A
M I E V I L L E
P E R D I D O S T R E E T
S T A T I O N











"I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at
the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That's a form of dying, that losing
contact with the city like that."

Philip K. Dick, We Can Build You










Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from
the earth. It has been night for a long time. The hovels that encrust the
river's edge have grown like mushrooms around me in the dark.
We rock. We pitch in a deep current.
Behind me the man tugs uneasily at his rudder and the barge corrects.
Light lurches as the lantern swings. The man is afraid of me. I lean out from
the prow of the small vessel across the darkly moving water.
Over the engines oily rumble and the caresses of the river small sounds,
house sounds, are building. Timbers whisper and the wind strokes thatch,
walls settle and floors shift to fill space; the tens of houses have become
hundreds, thousands; they spread backwards from the banks and shed light
from all across the plain.
They surround me. They are growing. They are taller and fatter and
noisier, their roofs are slate, their walls are strong brick.
The river twists and turns to face the city. It looms suddenly, massive,
stamped on the landscape. Its light wells up around the surrounds, the rock
hills, like bruise-blood. Its dirty towers glow. I am debased. I am compelled to
worship this extraordinary presence that has silted into existence at the