"06 - Children of the Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

This novel was begun at home in Greensboro, North Carolina, and finished on
the road at Xanadu II in Myrtle Beach, in the Hotel Panama in San Rafael,
and in Los Angeles in the home of my dear cousins Mark and Margaret Park,
whom I thank for their friendship and their hospitality. Chapters were
uploaded in manuscript form into the Hatrack River Town Meeting on America
Online, where several dozen fellow citizens of that virtual community
downloaded it, read it, and commented on it to the book's and my great
benefit.



CHAPTER 1



УI'M NOT MYSELFФ

[Image]

"Mother. Father. Did I do it right?"

The last words of Han Qing-jao, from

The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao





Si Wang-mu stepped forward. The young man named Peter took her hand and led
her into the starship. The door closed behind them.

Wang-mu sat down on one of the swiveling chairs inside the small
metal-walled room. She looked around, expecting to see something strange
and new. Except for the metal walls, it could have been any office on the
world of Path. Clean, but not fastidiously so. Furnished, in a utilitarian
way. She had seen holos of ships in flight: the smoothly streamlined
fighters and shuttles that dipped into and out of the atmosphere; the vast
rounded structures of the starships that accelerated as near to the speed
of light as matter could get. On the one hand, the sharp power of a needle;
on the other, the massive power of a sledgehammer. But here in this room,
no power at all. Just a room.