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Автор Тим Пауэрс

Tim Powers

Declare

To Fr. Gerald Leonard SVD

And with thanks to Chris Arena, John Berlyne, John Bierer, Jennifer Brehl, Charles N. Brown, Beth Dieckhoff, J. R. Dunn, Ken Estes, Ben Fenwick, Russell Galen, Patricia Geary, Tom Gilchrist, Lisa Goldstein, Anne Guerand, Varnum Honey, Fiona Kelleghan, Barry Levin, Marion Mazauric, Andreas Misera, Ross Pavlac, David Perry, Serena Powers, Ramiz Rafeedie, Jacques Sadoul, Sunila Sen-Gupta, Claire Spencer, Tom and Cheryl Wagner, and Eric Woolery-

– and especially to Jennifer Brehl and Peter Schneider and Serena Powers, for that long discussion about Kim Philby, over dinner at the White House in Anaheim.

Birthdays? yes, in a general way;

For the most if not for the best of men:

You were born (I suppose) on a certain day:

So was I: or perhaps in the night: what then?

Only this: or at least, if more,

You must know, not think it, and learn, not speak:

There is truth to be found on the unknown shore,

And many will find what few would seek.

– J. K. Stephen, inaccurately quoted

in a letter from St. John Philby

to his son, Kim Philby,

March 15, 1932

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Declare, if thou hast understanding.

– Job 38:4

PROLOGUE.

Mount Ararat, 1948

…from behind that craggy steep till then The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge, As if with voluntary power instinct, Upreared its head. I struck and struck again, And growing still in stature the grim shape Towered up between me and the stars, and still, For so it seemed, with purpose of its own And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me.

– William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 381-389

The young captain’s hands were sticky with blood on the steering wheel as he cautiously backed the jeep in a tight turn off the rutted mud track onto a patch of level snow that shone in the intermittent moonlight on the edge of the gorge, and then his left hand seemed to freeze onto the gear-shift knob after he reached down to clank the lever up into first gear. He had been inching down the mountain path in reverse for an hour, peering over his shoulder at the dark trail, but the looming peak of Mount Ararat had not receded at all, still eclipsed half of the night sky above him, and more than anything else he needed to get away from it.

He flexed his cold-numbed fingers off the gear-shift knob and switched on the headlamps-only one came on, but the sudden blaze was dazzling, and he squinted through the shattered windscreen at the rock wall of the gorge and the tire tracks in the mud as he pulled the wheel around to drive straight down the narrow shepherds’ path. He was still panting, his breath bursting out of his open mouth in plumes of steam. He was able to drive a little faster now, moving forward-the jeep was rocking on its abused springs and the four-cylinder engine roared in first gear, no longer in danger of lugging to a stall.

He was fairly sure that nine men had fled down the path an hour ago. Desperately he hoped that as many as four of them might be survivors of the SAS group he had led up the gorge, and that they might somehow still be sane.

Читать онлайн «Declare»

Автор Тим Пауэрс

Tim Powers Declare

Tim Powers

Declare