"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 06 - Trapped" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

Impervia leapt to meet them. The man she reached first went down under a fast jab to the jaw followed
by a teeth-cracking uppercut. In other circumstances, he would have toppled back; but his friends were
behind him, still moving forward. Accidentally or intentionally, they shoved the man's semiconscious body
toward the good sister, giving it a good hard push. She tried to dodge, but didn't quite get out of the
wayтАФthe dazed man thudded into her shoulder like a deadweight sack of flour and Impervia was spun
half-sideways, ending with her back to three of the attackers.

She realized her danger and snapped out a low donkey kick: not even looking at the men behind her,
just lifting her foot and driving it backward, hoping to discourage anyone from coming too close. One
man groaned, "Shit!" and crumpled, clutching his leg... but the other two blundered forward, one cuffing
the back of Impervia's head while the other seized her arm. She tried to wrench away from the man
who'd grabbed her, throwing a distraction kick at his ankles to make him loosen his grip. By then,
however, the men in front were attacking tooтАФone with a punch to the face that she managed to diminish
by jerking away her head, and one with a fist to the gut that she didn't diminish at all. The breath
whooshed out of her as she was lifted off her feet by the blow. A second later, she flopped to the
cobblestones.

"Myoko!" I shouted, "do something!" But Myoko, still in the doorway by my side, was already on the
job: staring at Impervia with intense concentration, her hands clenched tight into fists.

Unlike Impervia, Myoko didn't look dangerous. Though she was almost thirty, she could pass for fifteen:
barely four foot eight and slender, with waterfall-straight black hair that hung to her thighs, always pulled
back from her face with two ox-bone barrettes. At the academy, outsiders mistook her for a
studentтАФperhaps the daughter of a minor daimyo, a quiet schoolgirl destined for flower arranging and
calligraphy. But Myoko was neither quiet nor a schoolgirl... and if she ever wanted to arrange flowers,
she could do it at a distance of twenty paces by sheer force of will.

Much as I wanted to keep my eye on ImperviaтАФtwisting and writhing across the cobblestones as the
fishermen threw clumsy kicks at herтАФI couldn't help be distracted by the movement of Myoko's hair as
her concentration increased. Individual strands began to separate from the long straight whole, lifting up
like puppet strings. In less than three seconds, all the ends splayed out from each other, fanning wide into
the air. As a man of science, I assumed the effect came from static electricity; but the electrical charge
was created by a source far more esoteric than the Van de Graaff generator we'd used to do the same
trick back in college.

With a sudden lurch, Sister Impervia's body heaved off the ground and rose into the air. The tips of
Myoko's hair lifted too, curling up like a counterbalance... and I told myself perhaps Myoko's brand of
telekinesisneeded the curling hair to produce counteracting leverage.

What, after all, did I know about the physics of psionics? Nothing. As a scientist, my only certainty was
that psychic powers had been foisted on humankind by outer-space high-tech, courtesy of the
ultra-advanced aliens known as the League of Peoples. Before the League visited Earth, psionics were a
myth; after the League had passed through, ESP and suchlike abilities became undeniable fact, easily
reproduced in the lab (and on the back streets of Simka). No one knew how or why the League had
given one human in a thousand such a gift; all we could do was marvel at its effects... such as now, when
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