"Linda Evans - Time Scout 2 - Wages of Sin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

roller blades, skate boards, bicycles, video games-home versions and arcade
games-movies, popcorn, chocolate, colas, ice cream, and pepperoni pizza.
But he did not miss his parents.
To be accepted into the Yakka clan, with its banner of nine white yak
tails, as though he actually were important to someone, was enough, more than
enough, to make up for a father who had abdicated all pretense of caring about
his family. Not even the mother who, after her son had been missing for five
years only God knew where, more than likely dead, the son who had been rescued
by a time scout who'd given his life rescuing Skeeter-had welcomed him home
with a cursory peck on the cheek, obligatory for the multiple media cameras.
She had then, in her chilly, methodical way, calmly set about making lists of
the school classes he'd need to make up, the medical appointments he'd need,
and the new wardrobe that would have to be obtained, all without once saying,
"Honey, I missed you," or even, "How did you ever survive your adventure?"
never mind, "Skeeter, I love you with all my heart and I'm so glad you're home
I could cry"
Skeeter's mother was too busy making lists and making certain he was
antiseptically clean again to notice his long, still silences. His father's
sole response was a long stare of appraisal and a quiet, "Wonder what we can
make of this, Hmm? TV talk shows? Hollywood? At least a made-for-TV movie, I
should think. Ought to pay handsomely, boy."
And so, after two weeks of bitterly hating both of them and wishing them
gutted on the end of Yesukai's sword, when Skeeter's father-in the midst of
signing all the contracts he'd mentioned that first day-decided to send him to
some University school to have his brain picked on the subject of twelfth-
century Mongolian life and the early years of Temujin., firstborn son of
Yesukai-merely for the fee it would bring, Skeeter had done exactly what
Yesukai had taught him to do.
He had quietly left home in the middle of the night and made his way to New
York by way of a stolen car to continue his real education: raiding the enemy.
The man and woman who'd given him life had become members of that enemy. He
was proud-deeply proud--of the fact that he'd managed to electronically empty
his parents' substantial bank account before leaving.
Yesukai the Yakka Mongol Khan, father of the one-day Genghis Khan, had
begun Skeeter's formal training. New York street toughs furthered it. His
return to La-La Land, a time terminal he recalled as a half-finished shell of
concrete with few shops and only one active gate open for business, run by a
company called Time Ho! was the journeyman's equivalent of completing his
unique education.
So, when Skeeter said, "My father made me everything I am today," he was
telling the bald-faced, unvarnished truth. The trouble was, he was never sure
which father he meant. He possessed no such uncertainty about which man's
values he'd chosen to emulate. Skeeter Jackson was a twenty-first century,
middle-class, miserable delinquent who had discovered happiness and purpose in
the heart and soul of the Yakka Mongol.
And so he smiled when he worked his schemes against the enemy-and that
smile was, as others had sometimes speculated, absolutely genuine, perhaps the
only "genuine" thing about him. 'Eighty-sixers had become the closest thing
Skeeter now had to a family, a tribe to which he belonged, only on the
fringes, true; but he never forgot Yesukai's lesson. The property of Clan was