Готовый перевод Житие Мое / Life of Mine: Глава 6

Chapter 6

* * *

In the early hours of the next morning, our boat entered Trunk Bay with flags on the mast and a dull, monotonous plague alarm. Through the morning fog, the watchtowers flashed their lights, and at the entrance to the fairway we were met by an iron gate that reminded me of Capetower. The gate, however, was open. The boat's captain was nervous, Mr. Smith was tapping impatiently on the rail, and it took a good half-hour for the quarantine staff to wake up, spot us, and indicate the ship's berth.

Contrary to expectations, our appearance at Trunk Bay did not cause a sensation.

The head of the quarantine service and part-time chief of the local NZAMIPS office took the news of the death of the keeper of Yudoli with a grim fatalism:

"We told him, Get out of there while you still have your head, and he said, Everything is under control, everything is under control!"

I nodded sympathetically, and my uncle hummed understandingly - for a black mage to admit that he'd failed at something was completely unthinkable.

The chief of NZAMIPS was an old friend of Uncle Gordon's and a sensible man, so when we arrived in the quarantine zone, we were immediately put on probation and assigned to work as freelance orderlies. There were surprisingly few black wizards among the staff; Chief Harlick was always suffering from incomprehension on the part of others and took his breath away by inviting us to tea every night.

"Are you going to exorcise Rustle?"

"Where to find him now! This abomination will make a mess, and then it's gone. No, we'll collect the remains and mothball the buildings. Now the capital's bosses won't argue with that."

"How did people live there before?" I wondered

"Before... Three years ago, they were going to close us - there were no patients, and now we are building a new block - there are not enough places. We are living now."

It was difficult to argue with Chief Harlick - he knew too much about everything.

For me, the twenty-eight days in Trunk Bay were a real holiday - full board, comfortable rooms, and a rich cultural program. Chief Harlick turned out to be a connoisseur of Krowhard folklore and a sociable man, which for blacks is a rarity. He willingly commented on what was going on, asked no questions about my and my uncle's studies of the Source, and taught me a simple exorcism ritual, just in case. It is so much easier to live when everyone in charge is an insider!

I wrote a letter to my mother, reassuring her that we had finished the work on King's Island and complaining that it would have to wait a little longer to return (she had no reason to know about the quarantine). In the meantime, my theoretical knowledge of the undead was filling up quickly with practical application: we were invited to receive new arrivals and tame the especially violent ones-only a black mage could react properly to the antics of a mind stricken by an undead contagion. I got the kids. Lots of children with wandering smiles, impetuous movements, and unpredictable mood swings. In each of the little patients, I saw Lucik. It made me somehow very clear that my white family must be removed from Krowhard.

"The kids are coming to us from Brand Valley," Chief Harlick explained. "There's a whole town there that's grown in the last ten years, a lot of strangers coming in. Now they have to teach the rules of undead handling in schools as a core subject. I'd have started before, but the parents were against it, you know, unstable kids' psyche and all. So now they bring the kids to us, and the adults die on the spot because they know less about it than the little ones."

Well, at least as far as knowing the rules was concerned, I didn't have to worry about Lucik.

For volunteering for NZAMIPS, we were paid a hospital attendant's salary, one crown a day. Together with the twenty crowns we had earned in the two weeks, we had been on the expedition, we had received almost fifty. Note - earned by honest work! This sum did not solve my financial difficulties, and I began to cry to my uncle about my bitter fate. How could it be that the black mage had left no property to his son?

Uncle shrugged:

"If you want, I'll ask Harlick to find out why. I hadn't been in contact with your father in years, but you're right, it was strange. I mean, I'm a mediocre alchemist, but he was a real wizard, a cool black one. What the hell happened back there?"

No, it's still good to have friends, although for blacks this is the exception rather than the rule.

We got home when we were less than ten days away from the end of the summer holiday. Joe had put the hives away somewhere (though the bees were flying in the garden), but I didn't care about them anymore - I was now a real black mage, tough and brave.

I spent the time I had left before I returned to Redstone riding my scooter, scaring the cows, telling the kids stories about King's Island (which had nothing to do with reality), helping my uncle to clear a month's backlog of work in the workshop, and gathering rumors of what was going on in Krowhard. Chief Harlick was right: everything pointed to a return to the legendary days of yore. Eventually, I decided to talk to my stepfather about it.

"Joe, it has come to my attention that Krowhard has been in turmoil of late. You ought to move somewhere closer to Redstone or the capital."

The stepfather only sighed:

"I should. But we don't have the money to move, Thomas, even assuming I get a job right away."

Then we should at least get Lucik out of here. You should send him to a boarding school, or maybe you have relatives.

"I'm thinking about it."

I put my hard-earned fifty on the table.

"There! When I get back to Redstone, I'll send more. Think harder."

He crumpled and was in no hurry to take the money. Another white sickness on my head!

"What else?"

"You take such good care of your family. You do so much for the younger ones... And I never apologized to you!"

"What for?" I didn't understand.

"I invaded your home, took your father's place... You must be angry with me."

I sighed. How typical! The white mage would measure everyone by his own standards to the last. You'd think he was an empath.

"Haven't you been lectured on psychological differences?"

"They did, of course. I've always tried to be... well... understanding..."

But he still didn't understand it to the end.

"If my father had spent enough time at home for me to remember him. If you had come to the house when I was eight instead of eleven. If you had tried to lecture me. If you had forbidden me to buy that damn scooter. If you had started those fucking bees before I left... Anyway, if you had done things differently, I would have hated you to the core. But as it is... I guess real parents don't always understand their kids either, but it all works out somehow."

Joe smiled:

"You are older now. Wiser."

"There's that."

All that's left is to find a job. Oh, the money...

The day of my departure for Redstone was a noisy and hectic one. I had gone to the train station the day before and pulled a little scam: my compartment ticket had gone to an unidentified lucky man, and I was to return to Redstone on a shuttle bus. It wasn't entirely legal, but it gave me an extra eighteen crowns. Too bad it was going to take twice as long. My mother tried to put a tattered, jingling bag in my rucksack, and I persisted in taking it out.

"Son, take it on the road!"

"No money!" I was adamant that I didn't want it. "You need it more. There's always plenty of money to be made in the city."

I wish I knew how...

At the last moment, it turned out that the train wasn't stopping at Wilderness Station, so Uncle Gordon had to take me in his jalopy through two mountain passes. There was an upside to that, since there was no snotty goodbye, and a downside, since I couldn't talk to my mother about my father again.

It was an annoyingly slow journey on the local trains, which rarely run and stumble at every bouncy station. It was a good thing I had my food with me (my mother had done her best), and Joe had guzzled some of his own mead into a gourd (it made the journey a lot more fun). It took me twenty-six hours to get to Eckwerwer station, and from there were two trains to Redstone, so I had another three hours just to wait for my locomotive. Sleeping at the station was fraught with trouble, and I didn't want to spend money on a locker, so I sat in the waiting room, cuddling with my rucksack, bored to death.

At first, I amused myself by mentally constructing the speech I was going to give to Quater, who would probably want to know what I had been doing all summer. Should I tell him about the island and the quarantine? Then, with the copper pennies left over from the ticket purchase, I borrowed the local paper from the delivery boy (it could be put under my bum, and the seat would be less windy) and read it from cover to cover. The contents of the eight yellow pages reflected the essence of provincial life: an article on the harvest festival, an incidental column, curiosities, obituaries, a page of advertisements, and a crossword puzzle, which turned out to be stupendously stupid.

I glanced at the advertisements: farmers were selling livestock, furniture, tractors, and implements. There were very few offers to buy puppies and kittens, but there was a whole section of magical services at the end. Three dozen sorcerers offered the general public potency boosters and cockroach exorcisms, heavy horse manners, and rose rot remedies. Not a single black magician was among them, which is natural: who among us would agree to live in such a swamp? Black mages are irresistibly drawn to large, crowded cities, full of communal conveniences and devoid of insects. There's no room for oversight, and you can only sympathize with the poor folk who work in the local cleansing service - they must be sent there for their mortal sins. However, if things are changing in Eckwerh as they are in Krowhard...

And then, as if an invisible hand pressed on my brain, the sensation of a touch on the back of my head was so palpable that I turned around.

And there probably isn't a single NZAMIPS office in this preserve of white magic. If the local simple-minded farmers even know what it is. There's one field inspector for the whole canton, and he lives somewhere in Redstone. Hardly any of the locals know the ins and outs of licensing black magicians and are aware of the restrictions the inspectorate imposes on our practice; they usually pay money when they receive the goods rather than ask for a sales slip or invoice. It is impossible to meet the authorities here, even by accident, and a little competition does not hurt the Cleaning Service.

I carefully tore a free ad coupon from the newspaper, asked the newsagent for a pen, and wrote in the "text" column: "Black magician. Specialist in undead and otherworldly phenomena. Price list work. Guarantee. Free consultation. As a contact number I gave the number of a familiar "chatterbox" - this visually impaired girl with a well-pitched voice worked as a secretary for three or four small firms that were too poor to pay for an office with a phone. She was appreciated for her ability to find out from a client exactly who they were calling without asking silly questions like, "Who do you want?" Another plus was that she lived close to the university, so there was no need to run too far for news.

So, after all, I was up to my old tricks. As the saying goes, the black mage doesn't change its spots.

* * *

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
Его статус: идёт перевод

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/85505/549533

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP