"Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space 04 - Absolution Gap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

Scorpio recognised him as Clavain; he would have been as certain even
if he had thought the island uninhabited.
The pig felt a momentary surge of relief. At least Clavain was still alive.
No matter what else transpired today, that much had to count as a
victory.
When he was within shouting distance of the man, Clavain sensed his
presence and looked around. There was a breeze now, one that had not
been there when Scorpio landed. It pulled wild white hair across Clavain’s
pink-red features. His beard, normally neatly trimmed, had also grown
long and unkempt since his departure. His thin figure was clad in black,
with a dark shawl or cloak pulled across his shoulders. He maintained an
awkward posture between kneeling and standing, poised on his haunches
like a man who had only stopped there for a moment.
Scorpio was certain he had been staring out to sea for hours.
“Nevil,” Scorpio said.
He said something back, his lips moving, but his words were masked by
the hiss of the surf.
Scorpio called out again. “It’s me—Scorpio.”
Clavain’s mouth moved a second time. His voice was a croak that barely
made it above a whisper. “I said, I told you not to come here.”
“I know.” Scorpio had approached closer now. Clavain’s white hair
flicked in and out of his deeply recessed old-man’s eyes. They appeared to
be focused on something very distant and bleak. “I know, and for six
months we honoured that request, didn’t we?”
“Six months?” Clavain almost smiled. “Is that how long it’s been?”
“Six months and a week, if you want to be finicky about it.”
 “It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like no time at all.” Clavain looked back
out to sea again, the back of his head turned towards Scorpio. Between
thin strands of white hair his scalp had the same raw pink colour as
Scorpio’s skin.
“Sometimes it feels like a lot longer, as well,” Clavain continued, “as if
all I’ve ever done was spend each day here. Sometimes I feel as if there
isn’t another soul on this planet.”
“We’re all still here,” Scorpio said, “all one hundred and seventy
thousand of us. We still need you.”
“I expressly asked not to be disturbed.”
“Unless it was important. That was always the arrangement, Nevil.”
Clavain stood up with painful slowness. He had always been taller than
Scorpio, but now his thinness gave him the appearance of something
sketched in a hurry. His limbs were quick cursive scratches against the
sky.
Scorpio looked at Clavain’s hands. They were the fine-boned hands of a
surgeon. Or, perhaps, an interrogator. The rasp of his long fingernails
against the damp black fabric of his trousers made Scorpio wince.
“Well?”
“We’ve found something,” Scorpio said. “We don’t know exactly what it
is, or who sent it, but we think it came from space. We also think there
might be someone in it.”