"Terry Dowling - Roadsong" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dowling Terry)

Roadsong
Terry Dowling
Such is the power of names that when Lady Ty and Lady Ti met on deck in the first hour out of Port
Allure, it was with all the force of destiny, of precise and personal significance for both women.
Though they had never met before, they had long known of each other, and so in a vital sense were
already intimates. As they moved across the commons, so composed and elegant, both in sand-capes
and travelling fatigues, both smiling and with hands outstretched in formal greeting, those watching -
attendants, crewmen, the two Nationals who were (but could never truly be) their fellow travellers -
sensed something of the personal drama, the inescapable kinship, the subtle excruciation felt by both.
The third Lady did not smile, could not, would never smile again, but she 'smiled' anyway, an inclination,
nothing more, a flow of electrons, an impulse to smile. No-one knew she had done so except perhaps the
man who had carried her to the forward rail of the quarterdeck and fixed her there like a figurehead on
some ancient ocean-going vessel.
She was not a personality printing, not a biotectic construct at all; she was that rare thing, a creop, an
actual brain housed in a three-foot column of brass, a gleaming, antique restante container with seven
mutually interfacing backups and the finest Israel Board that money had once been able to buy, a row of
glittering sensory beads set across its face in front of where the brain was held. A life support assist from
another age.
This third Lady - more than two centuries old then - was the Lady Say.
And like the other two meeting then for the first time, she had been drawn to the deck by the bright
sunshine and the wide empty vistas through which this famous vessel ran. Brought there by her captain,
Tom Rynosseros, who had arranged for the padded brackets to be fixed to the rail so she could watch
the run along the Adanayas-Nos to Inlansay, more than she dared expect, despite her rank and
pedigree.
She was there, secure in her improvised cradle, when Ty and Ti came forth and confronted one another.
Her sensors gave her the momentous conversation better than organic ears would have.
"It had to happen," said the strikingly beautiful Lady Ty, the taller, darker of the two, dowager of a great
Emmened Clever Man. She wore mourning colours still, whites and off-whites delicately arranged to set
off dusky skin and a lovely face naked of all adornment at this time of bereavement but a single exquisite
Tarasin antique, a flower of gold, silver and titanium set at the forehead, a sign of her vanity, her personal
power and quite possibly that she had never loved her husband quite enough.
"Entertainment for the rest," replied her Chitalice counterpart, the Lady Ti, also lovely to look upon but
more sharply featured, shorter in stature, wearing sky blues the tones of several latitudes on this great
continent, her face strikingly adorned with birkin fans, eyes bandidoed in jewelled and beaded lines as if
some precious butterfly had been coaxed to settle upon her eyes and impressed there so it lived and
flickered in a net of photocells.
"Yes," the almost naked-faced Ty said. "I'm glad it's finally happened. Now we become friends and
frustrate them all."
"Good," Ti answered. "And look! The Lady Say is aboard."
"The one in the bottle, yes. The fortune-teller on the quay was right. It is a time for strange encounters.
She can hear us, you think?"
"I'd say not. It's very old. That's an Israel Board sensorium, I'm sure of it. Shall we spend the morning
together? Play this down?"
"Agreed. The last thing we want is talk. Let's join the Blue Captain. I suppose we should feel honoured."
No doubt in their private reflections, Tom Rynosseros was deemed sufficiently handsome and certainly
celebrated enough as a National to warrant the interest of both women. He was of good height,
well-enough made, economical in his movements. He wore his brown hair in the longer style of many
National captains (and many of the more flamboyant pirates, the truth be known), brushed back across
the top of his head in a glossy mane. His blue eyes glittered in his well-tanned face, twinkled there with
just enough lines at the corners to show mirth and exactly that hint of wild adventure and hard living Ti