"Emil Petaja - The Time Twister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

No, the Finns were not by nature blabbermouths. You had to pry and coax and wheedle to get any
distance behind their polite facades. Steve's friendship with Art Mackey was something of a rarity and his
honest desire to master the preposterous language, to learn about them, had nurtured it.
Swenson, the canny Swede who had dreamed up Hellmouth, had picked well. Finns were ideal to his
purpose. They knew logging and lumber. They reveled in hard work. They loved the things of nature. Oddly
aloof, they scorned the artifacts of civilization. Even their architecture was designed to grow out of nature,
not to distort or outrage it. Jean Sibelius, the great Finnish symphonist, said, "Others give you musical
cocktails. I offer you a clear, cold glass of water."
Steve thought about the Hellmouth town pump and how that dipper drink Art had taken must have
tasted. Symbolic. Like a Sibelius symphony. All that Art had absorbed of his father's yearning for the past,
not only for his childhood but for a racial childhood as well, was there in that thirst-quenching drink, to feed
his soul.
He thought about Old Izza Halvor and his forest magic tales. Well, the old man came by his bardic
dreams naturally. Finnish mythos had its basis in the phenomena of nature: the earth, the storm. Ukko, god
of the thunder; Ahti, the water goddess, from whose bosom all life had sprung. The bards of ancient
Finland knew that the forces of nature lived, that even the metals within the earth had a sentience of their
own. Yes, these things lived, in a manner mankind cannot fathom. The mountains are wise old companions
to man. To live among them, to sing the songs the wind and the storm sings, these things are good. All else
is cynical artifice and corruption. Who was to say that the tales Old Izza spun to little Ilma on that lonely
farm in the wilderness did not have a measure of reality which men of science could not permit themselves
to dwell on? These thoughts made computer builders and star measurers uncomfortable so they rejected
them.
Perhaps something deep inside Steve McCord's Irish genes empathized with such hints of far-out
knowledge and that was why he had deserted formal medical research to probe into man's earliest
beginnings. After all, compared to the long ache of time it took man to crawl out of the slimes and the
caves, the later knowledge was only a pin scratch. Perhaps at least some of the answers lay in going back.
'Way back.

An October drizzle swept the aircraft when the Inter mountain fan jet cleared the surrounding forests
and hamlets and bumped gently down onto the tarmac. Steve had been to Missoula before, once, briefly. A
town of some 40,000, it lay at the hub of several provident valleys and was rich and important in
disproportion to its population. Mountains hemmed it in. Behind lay the Mission Range, its line of white tops
remotely hung in blue-gray mists. In front of Steve, as he paused at the bottom of passenger stairs to pull on
his trench coat, the muted evening sun winked lazily on the wooded fringe of Mount Sentinel with the big
University of Montana "M" on it. To the south, Mount Jumbo, bare of trees but furred over with brown
weeds, lay like a sleeping mammoth left over from the preglacial times when dinosaurs roamed the tropical
swamps of Montana and Wyoming.
Before claiming his bag (only one and ill packed— he hadn't taken the time to buy anything), Steve
found a telephone booth and called the bus depot. No. There was no bus north and west out of Missoula
tonight. Tomorrow morning early? Let me see...
"Yes, 5 A.M. That early enough for you? You wanted the Blackfoot bus that hits Clinton, eh? Up in the
tall timber? There's only one run per and that's it."
"Fine."
"What's the destination? I mean, I have to put something on the ticket. If it's a dude ranch or a tourist
lodge, I'll have to give you the next regular station stop."
"Hellmouth," Steve said.
"Hell—Hellmouth. That's a new one on me." The man's voice was brisk, indifferent, with just a touch of
superiority. The day girl had gone off duty at six and this was to let the caller know he was a short run
driver, pinch hitting.
"Look it up," Steve said with growing irritation. He could use a martini and a shower and dinner, in any