Windrider

Начало книги

The Navigators towered over the desert. Unmoving, enigmatic, ominous, they thrust ribbed bowls at the sky. Moonlight filled the bowls, silvered the supporting beams and struts, and touched the network of ground rails that connected the giants with each other.

They shall be a sign of my promise to you.

George hunched forward on his horse. The wind was warm and dry out of the north. The breath of the Almighty. “God is good,” he said.

Marty lowered his cowl, and reached into his saddle bag. He had to push the staff aside to get into it. He pulled out a pair of binoculars, pushed the staff back into place, and patted Bonker's neck. Then he raised the glasses to his eyes. “Amen,” he said.

There were eighty-three of them, of identical dimensions, each approximately ten stories high from its wheeled base to the highest point on the bowl. Most of the Navigators pointed in the same direction, toward the southwest, at an elevation of about thirty-two degrees. A few, out of step, looked elsewhere, two or three toward Ayer's Rock, others away to the east, one toward Hammond as if it were contemplating him. Several had collapsed into the dry earth.

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