"Planet Of Twilight (Barbara Hambley)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

The young man nodded again, leaning his forehead on his fist, his breath
going out in a long sigh. Threepio could see he was still shivering: With
shock or exertion, the droid supposed sympathetically.
Some humans were simply not as resilient as others.
Encouragingly, Threepio ventured, "It isn't that far to Durren, sir.
The ship should run well enough until we have to make orbit. If you wish
to lie down and rest, I can certainly wake you when you're required to pilot
the ship into base."
For a long time Yeoman Marcopius didn't answer. Then he murmured, "Yeah.
I guess that's how it'll have to be."
He got to his feet, staggering and catching himself on Artoo's stubby
bulk. The astromech rolled beside him, to help him to the narrow bunk in an
alcove just beyond the control room door. The young man groped blindly for the
blanket-Artoo extended his gripper arm and pulled it up over him, and emitted
a gentle trill of comfort and farewell as he rolled from the room.
Thirty minutes later, when Threepio returned to ask the youth how long it
would be before they could subspace the Durren base, he found Marcopius dead.
The Force was everywhere, palpable, warming her like sunlight.
Lying-on a divan? On the toothed, fist-size crystals that carpeted the
old sea floor plains as far as vision could descry. - - Leia Organa Solo
basked in the warmth of the Force. So much warmer than the heatless fingernail
of the sun, she absorbed it through her skin, as if her body had been rendered
transparent like the amoebic Plasmars of dark Y'nybeth.
Someone was saying something to her, but she was deeply asleep and could
not make out the words.
She dreamed.
She was in her father's palace in Aldera. His study was a garden room,
looking through a double line of smooth, snow-white pillars to a small lawn
beyond whose curved railing the blue waters of the lake could be seen, the
endless plains of wind-combed grass beyond. The intoxicating smell of the
grass blew through on the warm winds, and she could hear the muted whisper of
the wind chimes among the pillars and the soft cooing and twittering of the
cairokas, the sounds of her childhood.
Her father was there. She was presenting her children to him, Jacen and
Jaina and Anakin grown to teenagers, wearing the faces she knew they would one
day wear.
"You've done well, daughter." Bail Organa extended a hand to touch
Jaina's heavy chestnut hair. The gold ring on his finger gleamed like a
fragment of the world's final sunset. "What have you taught them, these young
Jedi of the House of Organa?"
"I've taught them to love justice, as you loved justice, Father."
Leia's own voice sounded deep and quiet in the chamber's gentle twilight.
"I've taught them to respect the rights of all living things. I've taught
them that the Law is above any single being's will."
"But we know better." Anakin spoke in the breaking treble of an
adolescent, and there was an unfamiliar, ugly grin on his face as he stepped
forward, and a light in his crystal-blue eyes that Leia had never seen in
waking life. "We're Jedi Knights. We have the Power."
His light-saber licked out crimson from the shadow and slashed her father
in half.