"10 - Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Awards)

"She persuaded me to drop the charges against you."
"Whatever it was you offered me-twenty rials? I'm morally entitled to it, but I won't claim it. Come and see me when you're ready for something more wholesome-and meanwhile, how do you like her?"
"That is something for me to tell her," I said, "not you."
Ardis returned as I spoke, bringing with her a balding black man with a mustache. "Paul, this is Nadan. His English is very good-not so British as most of them. He'll do, don't you think?"
"He'll have to-you're sure he'll do it?"

"He'll love it," Ardis said positively, and disappeared again.
It seemed that Terry was the actor who played Mary Rose's husband and lover, Simon; and I-who had never acted in so much as a school play-was to be pressed into the part. It was about half an hour before curtain time, so I had all of fifty minutes to learn my lines before my entrance at the end of the first act.
Paul, the director, warned me that if my name were used, the audience would be hostile; and since the character (in the version of the play they were presenting) was supposed to be an American, they would see errors where none existed. A moment later, while I was still in frantic rehearsal, I heard him saying, "The part of Simon Blake will be taken by Ned Jefferson."
The act of stepping onto the stage for the first time was really the worst part of the entire affair. Fortunately I had the advantage of playing a nervous young man come to ask for the hand of his sweetheart, so that my shaky laughter and stammer became "acting."
My second scene-with Mary Rose and Cameron on the magic island-ought by rights to have been much more difficult than the first. I had had only the intermission in which to study my lines, and the scene called for pessimistic apprehension rather than mere anxiety. But all the speeches were short, and Paul had been able by that time to get them lettered on large sheets of paper, which he and the stage manager held up in the wings. Several times I was forced to extemporize, but though I forgot the playwright's words, I never lost my sense of the trend of the play, and was always able to contrive something to which Ardis and Cameron could adapt their replies.
In comparison to the first and second acts, my brief appearance in the third was a holiday; yet I have seldom been so exhausted as I was tonight when the stage darkened for Ardis's final confrontation with Kreton, and Cameron and I, and the middle-aged people who had played the Morelands were able to creep away.
We had to remain in costume until we had taken our bows, and it was nearly midnight before Ardis and I got something to eat at the same small, dirty bar outside which Kreton had tried to rob me. Over the steaming plates she asked me if I had enjoyed acting, and I had to nod.
it has turned my mind again to the fate of the old Americans. How often they, who chose their leaders for superficial appearances of strength, wisdom, and resolution, must have elected them only because they were as fatigued as I was last night.
I had meant to buy a hamper of delicacies, and call for Ardis about one, but she came for me at eleven with a little basket already packed. We walked north along the bank of the channel until we reached the ruins of the old tomb to which I have already referred, and the nearly circular artificial lake the Americans call the Basin. It is rimmed with flowering trees-old and gnarled, but very beautiful in their robes of white blossom. For some little American coin we were given command of a bright blue boat with a sail twice or three times the size of my handkerchief, in which to dare the halcyon waters of the lake.
When we were well away from the people on shore, Ardis asked me, rather suddenly, if I intended to spend all my time in America here in Washington.
I told her that my original plan had been to stay here no more than a week, then make my way up the coast to Philadelphia and the other ancient cities before I returned home; but that now that I had met her I would stay here forever if she wished it.
"Haven't you ever wanted to see the interior? This strip of beach we live on is kept half alive by the ocean and the trade that crosses it; but a hundred miles inland lies the wreck of our entire civilization, waiting to be plundered."
"Then why doesn't someone plunder it?" I asked.
"They do. A year never passes without someone bringing some great prize out-but it is so large..." I could see her looking beyond the lake and the fragrant trees. "So large that whole cities are lost in it. There was an arch of gold at the entrance to St. Louis-no one knows what became of it. Denver, the Mile High City, was nested in silver mines; no one can find them now."
"Many of the old maps must still be in existence."
Ardis nodded slowly, and I sensed that she wanted to say more than she had. For a few seconds there was no sound but the water lapping against the side of the boat.
"I remember having seen some in the museum in Teherannot only our maps, but some of your own from a hundred years ago."

"The Bourses of the rivers have changed," she said. "And when they have not, no one can be sure of it."
"Many buildings must still be standing, as they are here,; in the Silent City."
"That was built of stone-more solidly than anything else in the country. But yes, some, many, are still there."
"Then it would be possible to fly in, land somewhere, and.: pillage them."
"There are many dangers, and so much rubble to look through that anyone might search for a lifetime and only scratch the surface."
I saw that talking of all this only made her unhappy, and= tried to change the subject. "Didn't you say that I could: escort you to a party tonight? What will that be like?"
"Nadan, I have to trust someone. You've never met m y°
father, but he lives close to the hotel where you are staying,
and has a shop where he sells old books and maps." (So I
had visited the right house.-almost-after all!) "When he
was younger, he wanted to go into the interior. He made
three or four trips, but never got farther than the Appala
chian foothills. Eventually he married my mother and didn't
feel any longer that he could take the risks..."
"I understand."
"The things he had sought to guide him to the wealth of the past became his stock in trade. Even today, people who live farther inland bring him old papers; he buys them and resells them. Some of those people are only a step better than the ones who dig up the cemeteries for the wedding rings of the dead women."
I recalled the rings I had bought in the shadow of the broken obelisk, and shuddered, though I do not believe Ardis observed it.
"I said that some of them were hardly better than the grave robbers. The truth is that some are worse-there are people in the interior who are no longer people. Our bodies are. poisoned-you know that, don't you? All of us Americans. They have adapted-that's what Father says-but they are no longer human. He made his peace with them long ago, and he trades with them still."
"You don't have to tell me this."
"Yes I do-I must. Would you go into the interior, if I went with you? The government will try to stop us if they learn of it, and to confiscate anything we find."
I assured her with every oath I could remember that with her beside me I would cross the continent on foot if need be.
"I told you about my father. I said that he sells the maps and records they bring him. What I did not tell you is that he reads them first. He has never given up, you see, in his heart."
"He has made a discovery?" I asked-
"He's made many-hundreds. Bobby and I have used them. You remember those men in the restaurant? Bobby went to each of them with a map and some of the old letters. He's persuaded them to help finance an expedition into the interior, and made each of them believe that we'll help him cheat the other-that keeps them from combining to cheat us, you see."
"And you want me to go with you?" I was beside myself with joy.
"We weren't going to go at all-Bobby was going to take the money, and go to Baghdad or Marrakesh, and take me with him. But Nadan," here she leaned forward, I remember, and took my hands in hers, "there really is a secret. There are many, but one better-more likely to be true, more likely to yield truly immense wealth than all the others. I know you would share fairly with me. We'll divide everything, and I'll go back to Teheran with you."