George Martin - Fevre Dream

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «George Martin - Fevre Dream» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Фэнтези, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Fevre Dream: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Fevre Dream»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Fevre Dream — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Fevre Dream», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

“If you come, Abner, you and your people, there will be death. And not Julian’s alone. The others will guard him, and they will perish, and your people as well.”

“Sometimes you got to take that risk,” Marsh said. “And those who help Julian deserve to die.”

“Do they?” Joshua looked sad. “Perhaps they do. Perhaps we all should die. We are out of place in this world your race has built. Your kind has killed all but a handful of us. Perhaps it is time to slaughter the last survivors as well.” He smiled grimly. “If that is what you intend, Abner, then remember who I am. You are my friend, but they are blood of my blood, my people. I belong with them. I thought I was their king.”

His tone was so bitter and despairing that Abner Marsh felt his anger fading. In its place was pity. “You tried,” he said.

“I failed. I failed Valerie, and Simon, failed all those who believed in me. I failed you and Mister Jeffers, and that infant as well. I think I may even have failed Julian, in some strange way.”

“It ain’t your fault,” Marsh insisted.

Joshua York shrugged, but there was a cold grim look in his gray eyes. “Past is past. My concern is with tonight and tomorrow night and the night after. I must go back. They need me, though they may not realize it. I must go back and do what I can, however little it may be.”

Abner Marsh snorted. “And you tell me to give it up? You think I’m like that damned fool kept comin’ at you? Hell, Joshua, what about you ? How many times has Julian bled you now? It appears to me you’re just as damned stubborn and stupid as you say I am.”

Joshua smiled. “Perhaps,” he admitted.

“Hell,” Marsh swore. “All right. You’re goin’ back to Julian, like some egg-suckin’ idyut. What the hell do you want me to do?”

“You had better leave here as quickly as you can,” Joshua said, “before our hosts get more suspicious than they are already.”

“I’d figured out that much.”

“It’s over, Abner. Don’t come looking for us again.”

Abner Marsh scowled. “Hell.”

Joshua smiled. “You damned fool,” he said. “Well, look if you must. You won’t find us.”

“I’ll see about that.”

“Maybe there’s hope for us yet. I’ll return and tame Julian and build my bridge between night and day, and together you and I will outrun the Eclipse.”

Abner Marsh snorted derisively, but down inside he wanted to believe. “You take care of my goddamned steamboat,” he said. “Ain’t never been a faster one, and she better be in good repair when I get her back.”

When Joshua smiled it made the dry, dead skin around his mouth crackle and tear. He lifted a hand to his face and tore it away. It peeled off whole, like it was only a mask he’d been wearing, an ugly mask full of scars and wrinkles. Beneath it his skin was milky white, serene and unlined, ready to begin anew, ready for the world to write upon it. York crumbled his old face in his hand; wisps of old pain and flakes of skin sifted through his fingers and fell to the floor. He wiped his hand on his coat and held it out to Abner Marsh. They shook.

“We all got to make choices,” Marsh said. “You told me that, Joshua, and you was right. Them choices ain’t always easy. Someday you’re goin’ to have to choose, I think. Between your night folks and

… well, call it good. Doing right. You know what I mean. Make the right choice, Joshua.”

“And you, Abner. Make your own choices wisely.”

Joshua York turned, his cloak swirling behind him, and went outside. He vaulted over the balustrade with easy grace and dropped the twenty feet to the ground like it was something he did every day, landing on his feet. Then he was gone, vanished, moving so quick he seemed to fade into the night. Maybe he turned himself into a goddamned mist, Abner Marsh thought.

Away off on the distant shine that was the river, a steamer sounded her whistle, a faint melancholy call, kind of lost and kind of lonely. It was a bad night on the river. Abner Marsh shivered and wondered if there’d be a frost. He shut the balcony doors and walked on back to bed.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Fever Years: November 1857-April 1870

Both of them were true to their word: Abner Marsh kept on looking, but he did not find her.

They left Aaron Gray’s plantation as soon as Karl Framm was strong enough to travel, several days after Joshua York had vanished. Marsh was glad to be gone. Gray and his kin were getting mighty curious by then about why there was nothing in the papers about a steamboat explosion, and why none of their neighbors had heard of it, and why Joshua had taken off. And Marsh was getting tangled up in his own lies. By the time he and Toby and Karl Framm got themselves upriver, the Fevre Dream was gone, as he’d known she would be. Marsh returned to St. Louis.

Through the long dreary winter, Marsh kept up his search. He wrote more letters, he loitered around the riverfront bars and billiard halls, he hired some more detectives, he read too damn many newspapers, he found Yoerger and Grove and the rest of the crew of the Eli Reynolds and sent them up and down the river, cabin passage, looking. All of it turned up nothing. No one had seen the Fevre Dream . No one had seen the Ozymandias either. Abner Marsh figured they’d changed her name again. He read every goddamned poem Byron and Shelley ever wrote, but this time it was no use. It got so bad he had the damn poems memorized, and he even went on to other poets, but the only thing he found that way was a sorry-looking Missouri stern-wheeler named the Hiawatha.

Marsh did get one report from his detectives, but it told him nothing he hadn’t figured out already. The side-wheel steamer Ozymandias had left Natchez that October night with about four hundred tons of freight, forty cabin passengers, and maybe twice as many deckers. The freight had never been delivered. Neither the steamer nor the passengers had ever been seen again, except at a few woodyards just downstream of Natchez. Abner Marsh read over that letter a half dozen times, frowning. The numbers were way too low, which meant that Sour Billy was doing one damn poor job-unless he’d kept them down deliberate, so Julian and his night folks could have an easy time of it. A hundred and twenty people were gone, vanished. It gave Marsh a cold sweat. He stared at that letter and remembered what Damon Julian had said to him: No one on the river will ever forget your Fevre Dream.

For months Abner Marsh was plagued by terrible nightmares of a boat moving down the river, all black, every lamp and candle extinguished, the big black tarpaulins hung all around the main deck so even the ruddy light of the furnaces could not escape, a boat dark as death and black as sin, a shadow moving through moonlight and fog, hardly seen, quiet and fast. In his dreams she made no sound as she moved, and white shapes flitted about her decks silently and haunted her grand saloon, and inside their staterooms the passengers huddled in fear, until the doors opened one midnight, and then they began to scream. Once or twice Marsh woke up screaming as well, and even in his waking hours he could not forget her, his dream boat cloaked in shadows and screams, with smoke as black as Julian’s eyes and steam the color of blood.

By the time the ice was breaking up on the upper river, Abner Marsh was faced with a hard choice. He had not found the Fevre Dream, and the search had brought him to the brink of ruin. His ledger books told a grim story; his coffers were almost empty. He owned a steamboat company without any steamboats, and he lacked even the funds to have a modest one built. So, reluctantly, Marsh wrote his agents and detectives and called off the hunt.

With the little money he had left he went downriver, to where the Eli Reynolds still sat in the cutoff that had wrecked her. They fitted a new rudder to her, and patched up her stern wheel a little, and waited for the spring floods. The floods came, the cutoff became passable once more, and Yoerger and his crew nursed the Reynolds back up to St. Louis, where she was fitted with a brand new paddle, a new engine with twice the push, and a second boiler. She even got a new paint job, and a bright yellow carpet for her main cabin. Then Marsh launched her into the New Orleans trade, for which she was too small and too shabby and altogether poorly fitted, so he could continue his hunt personally.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Fevre Dream»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Fevre Dream» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Fevre Dream»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Fevre Dream» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x