"Diane Duane - Harbinger 1 - Starrise at Corrivale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

though willingness may help to ease the pain:
but virtue is yet cruel: though change brings good,
beware, harbinger, how it changes you.

Stochastics. mechalus version (v28.0).
XV. 3-11


Chapter One



THE WOMAN STOOD at the window, watching the planet turn beneath her, or seem to turn. The ship's
orbit was low, but not so much so that the dun and emerald curve of Ino would seem to take up the
whole view that her two-meter-wide window afforded. Over the world's edge, night was approaching,
one of ninety or a hundred nights that the ship would see in the course of one of Ino's genuine rotations.
Under the ship, for the moment, a golden day of early summer in the planet's northern hemisphere lay
drowning deep in lazy afternoon. The startling blue of the huge twin lakes of Aimara and Noumara, old
meteoric impacts in the planet's equatorial continent, looked at her like eyes, round and surprised, a little
hazed even at this altitude with the slowly burgeoning seasonal warmth. There would be people fishing
out in little boats on those lakes right now, while overhead, water birds skimmed by uttering little lazy
cries. Nothing disturbed the placid waters but the stroke of oars and the glittering golden circles of water
where the fish rose into the endless brazen afternoon, daring the edge of their world for a gulp of air.
But if you raised your head only a little from the blue of the lakes and the thought of the afternoon, you
could see the night coming-the blurred, shadowy edge of it sliding on toward the unsuspecting
afternoon, silent, inexorable, and uncaring. And how do you stop the night? she thought, shivering, just
once.
The Concord Heavy Cruiser Falada had been her home for nearly three years now. Although Lauren
Delvecchio had grown used to life on the ship, she would be more than glad to leave it when this
mission was done at last. There had indeed been times during these last few years when she had thought
it would never be done-that she would spend the rest of her life circling one or the other of these globes,
either the green and dun belted globe of Ino with its polar seas, or the dun and white streaked expanse of
Phorcys. There were periods during which she had become heartily sick of the sight of both of them and
refused to look out the window when she woke up in the morning because she would see only one or the

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other of them again, going through the same old dance around their primary, Thalaassa. Day succeeding
night, and night succeeding day, and not a breath's worth of change ensuing as a result. How many
thousands of these "little nights" have I seen now, Lauren had thought at such times, and how many
more am I going to see before this situation improves?
But now it was changing. Slowly, like a real night shading moment by moment into the gray of earliest
morning, the change had begun ... no thanks to the people down below. Or rather, all thanks to them.
The unquestioned, intransigent mutual hatred of the people on these two planets had finally pushed them
into a position from which neither could escape without the other's assistance. Except for the inherent
ironies, it was a nasty situation, but the present circumstances promised the beginning of an end to the
troubles which had brought Lauren here in the first place. She would finally be able to go home to
Thuldan Prime for a leave long enough to help her forget-with the utmost pleasure-what both these
planets looked like. Soon enough after that she would be back at Corrivale, helping the senior staff in