Black Star Rising

Начало книги

CASTOR was halfway across the paddy, part of the long line of farm workers, when he stepped on the dead man's head. He was not thinking about dead men. He wasn't really thinking about poking the rice seedlings into the muck, either, or about the warm rain dripping on his bent shoulders or about the ache in his back; he was thinking about Maria and her problem and about going for a swim and about whether it was possible that the people at the observatory would let him apply for a job there and mostly about what he and Maria would do in bed that night, and then all of a sudden there it was. He didn't know it was a dead man's head at first. He couldn't see it, though the water was only centimeters deep, because the sowers had stirred up the bottom mud. His foot told him it was solid, and heavy, and didn't belong there. "Tourists," he muttered to old Sarah, next to him in line. "They throw their garbage anywhere they like!"

Читать дальше →