"Robert Charles Wilson - Julian- A Christmas Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robert Charles)

Here, too, were the in-between things, the curiosities, the ugly or pretty baubles, as intriguing and as
useless as seashells. ("Put down that rusty trumpet, Adam, you'll cut your lip and poison your
blood!"—my mother, when we had gone to the Tip many years before I met Julian. There had been no
music in the trumpet anyway; its bell was bent and corroded through.)

More than that, though, there was the uneasy knowledge that these things, fine or corrupt, had
survived their makers—had proved more imperishable than flesh or spirit (for the souls of the secular
ancients were almost certainly not first in line for the Resurrection).

And yet, these books . . . they tempted; they proclaimed their seductions boldly. Some were
decorated with impossibly beautiful women in various degrees of undress. I had already sacrificed my
personal claim to virtue with certain young women at the Estate, whom I had recklessly kissed; at the age
of seventeen I considered myself a jade, or something like one; but these images were so frank and
impudent they made me blush and look away.

Julian simply ignored them, as he had always been invulnerable to the charms of women. He preferred
the larger and more densely-written material—he had already set aside a textbook of BIOLOGY,
spotted and discolored but largely intact. He found another volume almost as large, and handed it to me,
saying, "Here, Adam, try this—you might find it enlightening."

I inspected it skeptically. The book was called A HISTORY OF MANKIND IN SPACE.

"The moon again," I said.

"Read it for yourself."

"Tissue of lies, I'm sure."

"With photographs."

"Photographs prove nothing. Those people could do anything with photographs."

"Well, read it anyway," Julian said.

In truth the idea excited me. We had had this argument many times, Julian and I, especially on autumn
nights when the moon hung low and ponderous on the horizon. People have walked there, he would
say. The first time he made this claim I laughed; the second time I said, "Yes, certainly: I once climbed
there myself, on a greased rainbow—" But he had been serious.

Oh, I had heard these stories before. Who hadn't? Men on the moon. What surprised me was that
someone as well-educated as Julian would believe them.

"Just take the book," he insisted.

"What: to keep?"

"Certainly to keep."

"Believe I will," I muttered, and I stuck the object in my back-satchel and felt both proud and guilty.
What would my father say, if he knew I was reading literature without a Dominion stamp? What would