"James E. Gunn - The Magicians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

I took another look at the redhead. "You're right. I don't believe it."
 She shrugged as if what I believed was of no importance. I took a good look at her for the first
time. She was only pretty. I might have thought her beautiful somewhere else, but the other women in the
room had used up that adjective. Her blue eyes and dark hair provided an interesting contrast, but her
features had small imperfections. I know: experts say that imperfections enhance beauty, but her eyes
were too large, her nose was too small and turned up a little at the end; her mouth was too generous, and
her chin, too stubborn. Now that I was straightened, she reached only to my chin. But her skin was
smooth creamтАФI always found that peculiarly effective in a woman until I found out how much of it
comes out of a bottleтАФand her figure wasтАФwell, I mentioned that before.
She seemed to be in her early twenties, which gave her almost a decade on me. The other
women didn't look much older, it was true, but there was a maturity to them that showed in the way they
stood or moved, and a youthfulness in her that revealed itself in a grin and a girlish slouch. She knew she
was being inspected, and she didn't care.
She laughed again. It was a pleasing, girlish sound; it wouldn't flutter any pulses, but it made me
want to laugh with her. "Have a program, Gabriel."
She handed me a booklet from a stack beside her. I took it, wondering if her eyesight was
unusually good. It would have to be to read my name card. I still had it in my hand. But maybe she had
heard the doorkeeper.
I leaned forward to read the name on the card attached to the pleasing slope of her white knit
dress.
"Call me ARIEL," it said, "or pay me five dollars."
"Ariel?" I said. "Where's Prospero?"
"He's dead," she said simply.
"Oh," I said. That was the trouble with being an uninitiate in a private gathering. You couldn't say
anything for fear of saying the wrong thing. "Thanks for the program, Ariel. And the support."
"Any time," she said. Her blue eyes seemed to say, in a pleasant way, that the words weren't
meaningless courtesy.
I started to turn away, pulled by a sense of duty, but a large, jovial man with white hair stood in
my way.
"Ariel," he said over my head. "It was sad news about your father. The society won't seem the
same."
She murmured something while I glanced at the card on the broad chest in front of me. It
demanded that it be called Sammael.
"It's a disgrace that he's got you here passing out programs like a neophyte," Sammael said. "You
should be up on the platform with the other dignitaries."
"Nonsense," she said. "I am a neophyte. In spite of what my father was, I'm just an apprentice.
Anyway, I volunteered."
"Tut-tut," he said. I listened with fascination, trapped between them without a graceful way to
escape. I didn't think anybody said "tut-tut" anymore. "You're an adept if there ever was one. I'd match
you against any of them. But I've been out of touch for several months. My own career has arrived at a
new crisis point, and I had difficulty getting away even for these two days. But I couldn't miss one of our
annual meetings."
"Many of the members have said the same thing to me," Ariel said, "but like you they couldn't
stay away. Everything seems to be coming to a focus."
I noticed that she didn't ask about his career, whatever it was. She avoided it as if to ask would
be a serious breach of etiquette. "Excuse me," I said, trying to squeeze out from between them.
"Sammael," Ariel said, "this is Gabriel."
The large red face swiveled to inspect me. Blue eyes weighed me; they were ordinary blue eyes,
but there was something a little wrong with them, as if they were perfect imitations made out of glass so
that they caught the light wrong. "Gabriel, eh? I've heard fine things about you. Great things are expected.