"Chris Roberson - Gold Mountain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Chris)

complete. She could return straight away to the Inn of the White Lotus, pack up her things, and board a
Cloud Flyer back to the Northern Capital. Once she'd filed her findings with the chief of her bureau,
she'd be able to return to her regular duties—and more, she'd be able to return to her own life.

The tram reached the easternmost point of its circuit, the driver ringing a bell to announce the last stop.
Lien released her hold on the guardrail and hopped to the cobbled street, a few sad-faced old white men
making their careful way down the tram's steps behind her. As the tram reversed course and made its
way back toward the west, Lien walked up the narrow street; under an archway crested by a massive
carved eagle, through the gates of Ghost Town.

Most of Lien's days, these last months, had been spent within the wall of Ghost Town, among the old
Vinlanders, the "white ghosts." This was a bachelor society, with only one woman for every ten men.
She'd gotten to know more than a few of them, over the long months, as nearly all of them had been
involved in the construction of Gold Mountain, the three thousand kilometer-tall tower which rose to
meet the orbital elevator, the Bridge of Heaven. Some of the old men had been more helpful than others.
Some of them had reached such an advanced age that they couldn't even remember the year in which
they were born, nor their own mothers' names. When asked, they would simply mutter, "It was too long,
too long ago," in their guttural English. They were hollow men, these old Vinlanders, leaning against cold
walls or sitting on empty fruit crates, patiently waiting for death to claim them. They were used up,
discarded, and they made Lien uncomfortable in her own skin.

Lien had worked her whole life to overcome the stereotypes and misconceptions most Chinese had
about Vinlanders, even those like her who had never set eyes on the homeland of their forefathers. Lien's
grandfathers and one grandmother all arrived in China in the middle of the last century, and her father had
been born in China. Ghost Town, full of men and women who fit every preconceived notion of the "white
ghost," was a reminder to her of how far her people had come in China, and how far they had yet to go.

Lien had only been sent to Guangdong province because she spoke English, the native dialect of the
Vinlanders. Her parents had insisted she learn the language, as her maternal grandparents had never
learned Mandarin, nor Cantonese, nor any other Chinese dialect. She resented her grandparents for this,
embarrassed by their refusal to acclimate. She seldom spoke to them when she and her sister were
children, and even less as an adult. When her grandfather passed away, just the previous summer, she
had not talked to him in nearly ten years. Lien didn't even attend the funeral ceremony, claiming that her
duties at the Historical Bureau prevented her attendance. Her mother had yet to forgive her for this
breach of etiquette.

Her last discussion with McAllister James had been brief, but he seemed more lucid and communicative
than most of the old-timers she'd interviewed over the previous months. She anticipated a short
discussion with him this morning, and with any luck she'd be back in Beijing by the week's end.

At the northern end of Ghost Town, Lien came to the building where her subject lived. To reach his small
room on the top floor, Lien had to climb the rickety stairway, up past the foul smelling Vinlander
restaurant on the ground floor, from which the odor of grits, hominy, and meatloaves constantly poured,
and a small clinic on the second floor where a medicine man still tended to the injuries and ills of Ghost
Town with his strange western remedies. At the top floor landing, she found herself at the end of a long,
dimly lit hallway, with doorways crowded on either side. Lien checked her notes one final time,
confirming the address, and made her way to the correct door.

The old man who answered the door looked at her with barely disguised suspicion, as though he didn't
recognize her.