"Michael Scott Rohan - Chase the Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rohan Michael Scott)

here was - what was it called? I knew the turn, I didn't need the name, but I
saw it on the wall as 1 turned off the roundabout. Danube Street.
All the street names were like that round here, as far as I remembered.
Danube Street; Baltic Street; Norway Street - all the far-off places which had
once seemed as familiar as home to the people who lived and worked here, even
if they never saw them. It was from them their prosperity came, from them the
money that paid for these looming walls of stone, once imposing in light
sandstone, now blackened with caked grime. Herring and spices and timber,
amber and furs and silks, all manner of strange and exotic stuffs had paid for
the cobbles that drummed beneath my tyres now, at a time when the town's prime
street was a rutted wallow of mud and horse-dung. Some of the smaller
side-streets had really arcane names -Sereth Street, Penobscot Lane; it was in
Tampere Street I stopped finally and parked.
I hoped the name didn't reflect the local habits, and that the car would be
all right; but I couldn't face being shut in it any longer. I wanted to
explore on foot, smelling the sea in the wind. I felt a few drops of rain in
it instead, turned back a moment, then looked up at the sky and caught my
breath. Over the warehouse rooftop opposite blazed the last streaks of the
glorious sunset; and against them, stark and black as trees in winter, loomed
a network of mastheads. Not the simple mastheads of modern yachts, nor the
glorified radar rigs of the larger ships; these were the mastheads of a
square-rigged sailing ship, and a huge one at that, the sort of things you
would expect on the Victory or the Cutty Sark. The last time I'd seen anything
like them was when a Tall Ships rally had put in, and that only on local TV.
Had the tourist bods moored one here, or something really old? This I had to
see. I pulled my light anorak closer about me and walked on into the deep
shadows between the wide-set streetlights. The hell with the weather, the hell
with everything! I was a bit surprised at myself. No doubt about it, rebellion
had me in its grip.
An hour and a half later, of course, I was regretting it bitterly. My
hair was plastered flat to my wind-chilled scalp, my soaking collar was sawing
at my neck, and I was desperate for my dinner. All those odd little places I
remembered were just boarded holes in the high walls now, or seedy little
cafes with fading pop posters and plastic tables barely visible through the
grimy glass; and every one of them was closed, and might have been for years.
The sea was within earshot, but never in sight; and there was no trace of
masts, or of the signs you'd expect to a tourist attraction either. I would
have been happy enough now with something microwaved at home, if I could only
get back to my car; but just to cap everything, I'd lost my way, taken a wrong
turn somewhere around those featureless warehouse walls, and now everywhere
was strange. Or simply invisible; either some of the streets had no lighting,
or it had failed. And there wasn't a soul about, nor even a sound except my
own footsteps on the cobbles and the distant breath of the ocean. I felt like
a lost child.
Then I heard voices. They seemed to be echoing out around the corner of the
street ahead, and so desperate was I that I'd gone rushing round before I'd
realized that they didn't sound at all friendly; more like a brawl. And that,
in fact, was what was going on. At the street's end was the sea, with only a
dim glimmer to distinguish it from the sky above; but I hardly noticed it.
There was a single light in the street, over the arched doorway of a large