"Gene Wolfe - New Sun 5 - The Urth of the New Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

manuscript filled it, as I knew it would. I closed the lid and locked it, adjusted
my pistol to its lowest setting, and fused lid and coffer into a single mass with
the beam.
To go on deck, one passes through strange gangways, often filled by an
echoing voice that, though it cannot be distinctly heard, can always be
understood. When one reaches a hatch, one must put on a cloak of air, an
invisible atmosphere of one's own held by what appears to be no more than a
shining necklace of linked cylinders. There is a hood of air for the head, gloves
of air for the hands (these grow thin, however, when one grasps something,
and the cold seeps in), boots of air, and so forth.
These ships that sail between the suns are not like the ships of Urth. In place of
deck and hull, there is deck after deck, so that one goes over the railing of one
and finds oneself walking on the next. The decks are of wood, which resists the
deadly cold as metal will not; but metal and stone underlie them.
Masts sprout from every deck, a hundred times taller than the Flag Keep of


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the Citadel. Every part appears straight, yet when one looks along their
length, which is like looking down some weary road that runs beyond the
horizon, one sees that it bends ever so slightly, bowing to the wind from the
suns.
There are masts beyond counting; every mast carries a thousand spars, and
every spar spreads a sail of fuligin and silver. These fill the sky, so that if a
man on deck desires to see the distant suns' blaze of citron, white, violet, and
rose, he must labor to catch a glimpse of them between the sails, just as he
might labor to glimpse them among the clouds of an autumn night.
As I was told by the steward, it sometimes happens that a sailor aloft will lose
his hold. When that occurs on Urth, the unfortunate man generally strikes the
deck and dies. Here there is no such risk. Though the ship is so mighty, and
filled with such treasures, and though we are so much nearer her center than
those who walk upon Urth are to the center of Urth, yet her attraction is but
slight. The careless sailor drifts among the shrouds and sails like thistledown,
most injured by the derision of his workmates, whose voices, however, he
cannot hear. (For the void hushes every voice except to the speaker himself,
unless two come so near that their investitures of air become a single
atmosphere.) And I have heard it said that if it were not thus, the roaring of
the suns would deafen the universe.
Of all this I knew little when I went on deck. I had been told that I would have
to wear a necklace, and that the hatches were so constructed that the inner
must be shut before the outer can be opened--but hardly more. Imagine my
surprise, then, when I stepped out, the leaden coffer beneath my arm.
Above me rose the black masts and their silver sails, tier upon tier, until it
seemed they must push aside the very stars. The rigging might have been
cobweb, were the spider as large as the ship--and the ship was larger than
many an isle that boasts a hall and an armiger in it who thinks himself almost
a monarch. The deck itself was extensive as a plain; merely to set foot on it
required all my courage.
When I sat writing in my cabin, I had scarcely been aware that my weight had
been reduced by seven-eighths. Now I seemed to myself like a ghost, or rather