"David Freer - The Forlorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Freer Dave)

To Keilin the sea was no place of romance. It was symbolized by the garbage tide he and other
scavengers picked at along the littered shore opposite the quays. He had fantasies about those mountains
however . . . all those trees, and running water . . . surely that was the place where his dreams could
come true? He looked out into the heat haze. He couldn't see the mountains today, but that was where he
was going. This afternoon, as soon as the library closed, he'd start looking for a map to get him there. He
slipped back down the chimney and into sleep, secure in his optimism.

He got busy as soon as the doors below clicked shut. Gradually the optimism was eaten away as he
realized that the atlases were at least three hundred years out of date. The surveyors hadn't been aware
that the planet had millennia-long alternating pluvial and dry cycles. The wet cycle had ended nearly two
hundred and fifty years ago. The maps also held little in the way of guidance for a boy who would have to
travel on foot. He sat peering at an array of them in anger and frustration. Why, they were all rubbish!
They showed two rivers crossing the desert, the Tinarana, and the Syrah. The Syrah River was supposed
to come out a few miles south of the city. But he'd stared out toward the mountains often enough to
know there was no green line into the yellow-brown there, just a dusty valley. And this map showing
vegetation types indicated the desert as "dry savannah." He'd had to look the word up. Bloody drivel!
Everyone knew that ten miles inland there was only sand and more sand.

He'd have to chance it up the Tinarana. But the caravans only went up to the Thunder Gorge, some
hundred and fifty miles away. Above this the river had cut so deeply into the rock of the high plateau that
farming with its water was no longer possible. Funny, the maps all showedthat gorge.

Should he leave tonight? Procrastination, fueled by fear of the unknown, held him. Tomorrow night
would be better. He hated the thought of leaving his refuge. Surely the search would be less intense the
longer he waited? And he still had food. He could afford to wait a while.

If he'd gone up to the roof and seen the files of torches as the soldiers moved slowly from house to
house, he might have been less tempted to stay. The search was not stopping for nightfall. The curfew
might be hurting the Patrician's nightly cut from the dock whores, but it was being strictly enforced. The
great chain was raised across the channel. The ranged mangonels were readied. Nothing would leave by
sea, and the city gates were closed siege-tight.

Testosterone can cause immense problems. Keilin had snuggled down in the early morning cool,
enjoying the security of his lair for the last time. Sleep had claimed him rapidly. Actual sex was outside
Keilin's experience, but from his observation of his mother's latter profession he knew a great deal about
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it. He'd made some detailed studies of the library's dusty elderly medical textbooks, studying the much
thumbed sections of otherwise pristine texts with care. But arousal made the pendant stone start to grow
colder, and even touching himself made the terrible chill bite at his skin. Fear had always been enough to
stop him going any further. But of late his dreams had been getting more and more vivid. Normally the
cold jewel on his chest woke him abruptly.

A fold of his ragged shirt betrayed him. It isolated the jewel from contact with his skin and allowed the
dream to develop in glorious, if slightly confused, technicolor. It was the instinctive thrusting movements
at the moment of release that shook the jewel loose from its cocoon of cloth. It touched his skin, and the