"Zohra Greenhalgh - Tricksters Touch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenhalgh Zohra)

entertain himself, but since Jinndaven was the Greatkin of Imagination he
could not keep from imagining a thousand different scenarios, most of them
disastrous. Dressed in mauves and small mirrors, Jinndaven literally
sparkled when he moved. Leaning toward Trickster, the light of a nearby
candle glinted off Jinndaven's robe and found an answering resonance in
one of Trickster's pied eyes. Seeing this, Jinndaven hesitated.

"Well?" asked Rimble as nice as you please. "I just hope you don't plan to
make the last three courses of dinner as interesting as the first six."

"You still sore about the Jinnaeon?" Trickster asked incredulously.

Rimble referred to a sudden period of transition, a tricksterish shifttime, he
had named for his imaginative brother, Jinndaven. In certain terms, this
transition period could be seen as a mutation in time. This mutation (or
fluctuation) had been necessary to throw space and time off balance for a
while. If reality had remained on its usual track, Rimble couldn't have
triggered a quantum leap of consciousness that the Presence wanted
implemented through all the known universes. The Presence was the one
great being to whom the Greatkin owed their allegiance. It was the
Presence that all the Greatkin served, even Rimble.

It seemed the Presence thought the two-legged races in all the known
universes, especially the world of Mnemlith, were too concerned with their
day-to-day lives. They were missing the larger cosmological dramas that
developed and exploded around them on a constant basis. In the past
millennium or so, the Presence felt the two-legged races had grown
unbearably small-minded. It was Rimble's task to make them large-minded
again.

This task proved more difficult than Trickster could possibly have foreseen.
Not only were the two-leggeds of Mnemlith out and out resistant to change,
some of the Greatkin themselves acted in like manner, a few of them
consciously thwarting Rimble's attempts to do the will of the Presence.
Rimble thought this very small-minded of them, and said so often.

When Jinndaven didn't answer him immediately, Trick-ster repeated his
question, "You still sore about me calling it the Jinnaeon?"

"WellтАФIтАФ" Jinndaven shrugged. "Yeah. I'm a little sore."

"Jinnaeon sounds better than Rimblaeon."

"That may be," Jinndaven admitted. "But look at all the trouble you caused
on Mnemlith. All in my name. You said it would be a teensy-weensy
fluctuation of consciousness. You had drugs, torture, insanity, civil
unrestтАФ"

"Yes, yes," snapped Rimble hastily. "Well, it couldn't be helped. That was
the resistance to change. Mattie's fault entirely," added Rimble with a