"Michael Moorcock - Oswald Bastable 1 - The Warlord of the Ai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

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THE WARLORD OF THE AIR
by Michael Moorcock

v1.0

BOOK ONE

HOW AN ENGLISH ARMY OFFICER ENTERED THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE AND WHAT HE SAW THERE

CHAPTER I The Opium Eater of Rowe Island

IN THE SPRING of 1903, on the advice of my physician, I had occasion to visit that remote and
beautiful fragment of land in the middle of the Indian Ocean which I shall call Rowe Island. I had
been overworking and had contracted what the quacks now like to term 'exhaustion' or even 'nervous
debility'. In other words I was completely whacked out and needed a rest a long way away from
anywhere. I had a small interest in the mining company which is the sole industry of the island
(unless you count Religion!) and I knew that its climate was ideal, as was its location-one of the
healthiest places in the world and fifteen hundred miles from any form of civilisation. So I
purchased my ticket, packed my boxes, bade farewell to my nearest and dearest, and boarded the
liner which would take me to Jakarta. From Jakarta, after a pleasant and uneventful voyage, I took
one of the company boats to Rowe Island. I had managed the journey in less than a month.

Rowe Island has no business to be where it is. There is nothing near it. There is nothing to
indicate that it is there. You come upon it suddenly, rising out of the water like the tip of some
vast underwater mountain (which, in fact, it is). It is a great wedge of volcanic rock surrounded
by a shimmering sea which resembles burnished metal when it is still or boiling silver and molten
steel when it is testy. The rock is about twelve miles long by five miles across and is thickly
wooded in places, bare and severe in other parts. Everything goes uphill until it reaches the top
and then, on the other side of the hill, the rock simply falls away, down and down into the sea a
thousand feet below.

Built around the harbour is a largish town which, as you approach it, resembles nothing so much as
a prosperous Devon fishing village-until you see the Malay and Chinese buildings behind the
facades of the hotels and offices which line the quayside. There is room in the harbour for
several good sized steamers and a number of sailing vessels, principally native dhows and junks
which are used for fishing. Further up the hill you can see the workings of the mines which employ
the greatest part of the population which is Malay and Chinese labourers and their wives and
families. Prominent on the quayside are the warehouses and offices of the Welland Rock Phosphate
Mining Company and the great white and gold facade of the Royal Habour Hotel of which the
proprietor is one Minheer Olmeijer, a Dutchman from Surabaya. There are also an almost ungodly
number of missions, Buddhist temples, Malay mosques and shrines of more, mysterious origin. There
are several less ornate hotels than Olmeijer's, there are general stores, sheds and buildings
which serve the tiny railway which brings the ore down from the mountain and along the quayside.
There are three hospitals, two of which are for natives only. I say 'natives' in the loose sense.
There were no natives of any sort before the island was settled thirty years ago by the people who
founded the Welland firm; all labour was brought from the Peninsula, mainly from Singapore. On a
hill to the south of the harbour, standing rather aloof from the town and dominating it, is the
residence of the Official Representative, Brigadier Bland, together with the barracks which houses