"C. S. Friedman - The Madness Season" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

I ran.Tried to run. The past overlapped the present, raining images down upon me as I dodged that
hated smell. But a hand shot out of darkness and grabbed me by the lapel of my coat as I passed the
corner of the building. I was swung back, into the brickwork, and there was blinding painтАФbut that
wasn't what ter-rified me most. It was that smell: a thick, acrid odor, the stink of Earth's defeat.

Honn-Tyr.

There were six of themтАФat least, six that I could seeтАФand they were all heavily armed. Taller than I.
was by a handswidth, with black and mottled green and a dozen other shades of almost-black covering
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their bodies in random splotches. Identical, all of them, with an absoluteness that bore chilling witness to
the unity of their nature. Six armed extensions of a single will, gathered about me like the fingers of a
hand, poised to crush. And willing to crush, should I dare to defy them. But there was nothing to be
gained by fighting them, I knew that from past experience. No hope of escape, on any terms. I knew that
all too well.

The dark claws reached for me and I held myself still, despite my revulsionтАФsubmitted to the odor of
their presence as they searched my person, tearing my clothing, discarding their findsтАФand tried to forget
that once, in the distant past, I had dared to fight them. My current identity was passive, nonthreatening; I
couldn't afford to lose control of that.

At last they finished. My disks were scattered, and I saw a clawed foot crush one of them as my
assailant shifted his weight. My other possessions were scattered as well, lost in the thick summer grass.
And the pills on which I dependedтАФmy God, ifthose were lostтАФ

"Daetrin Ungashak To-Alym Haal."

My current name, a Tyrran number; voiced in the harsh, staccato whisper of the Honn-Tyr, it was a
com-ment as well as a question.

I barely managed to get my voice to work. "What do youтАФ"

"Tiye Kuolqa," my assailant announced.Itis the Will. "You will come with us."

I considered running. Better in some ways to be shot down now, than to face whatever fate the Tyr
might have in store for me. But there was, as always, a shadow of cowardice resident within meтАФand it
wasthis that won out, whispering,Maybe they don't know the truth yet. Maybe there's some other
reason they want you. Maybe, if you cooperate, you can talk your way out of this. And so, clinging
to that fragile hope, I moved away from the wallтАФslowly, making no sud-den movementsтАФand allowed
them to drive me south-ward, toward the bulk of the campus.

How had they found me out? Certainly not through any outstanding display of intelligence on my part, or
any hint of a rebellious nature. Those things would have stood out like armor-spikes on a human, and I
had been careful to suppress them. Since the time of the Conquest, the Tyr had devoted itself to
redesigning the human species. From the wholesale slaughter that took place during the Subjugation, to
the current sys-tem of transportation, it had worked at weeding out all seeds of possible insurrection,