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

There was a small movement among the dyanthis leaves. Leia glanced
quickly across at Dzym, in time to see the secretary sit back, strangely
misshapen-looking in his granite-colored robes, an expression of satiated
ecstasy moving across his face. He sighed deeply, savoringly, and was still.
"I had hoped to convince you to come to our aid, Your Excellency."
Ashgad's voice again drew her mind away from the curiously nonworking
secretary. "And I very much appreciate your sending a commission.
I'll certainly use all the influence I possess in the Newcomer community
to help them with their findings."
Leia rose, and extended her hand. "I know you will." She spoke with
genuine warmth, though the cynical rebel who still lived in the back of her
mind added, I just bet you will.
Ashgad bowed low over her hand, an old-fashioned courtesy she hadn't
encountered since she'd left Palpatine's court. The man seemed completely
sincere, and Leia's own instinct to help and protect embattled minorities
sympathized with his frustration. From having contended with such factions as
the Agro-Militants and the United Separatists, she did genuinely wish that she
could do something for modern, intelligent people struggling to free
themselves from irrational tyranny.
If that was what was actually going on.
"See that Master Ashgad finds his way back to the shuttle bay all right,
would you, Ssyrmik?"
Leia's small honor guard sprang to their feet as the Chief of State and
her guests stepped through the doors to the conference chamber's anteroom. The
lieutenant bowed, and shouldered her sleek white-and-silver ceremonial blaster
rifle. "This way, Master Ashgad, Master Dzym."
Looking at the youthful faces and earnest demeanor of those half dozen
young graduates of the New Republic's Space Academy made Leia feel a hundred
years old.
The trio of bodyguards Ashgad had brought with him bowed to her as well:
Handsome androgynes in close-fitting, light blue uniforms with the oddly dead-
looking hair of very expensive dolls.
As she watched the bronze-embossed doors of the corridor shut behind
them, Leia heard a soft, gravelly whisper behind her say, "Those three smell
wrong, Lady. They are no living flesh."
Leia glanced behind her at the four small, gray, wrinkled human-oids who
seemed to have melted from the antechamber's walls. The smallest, who barely
topped Leia's elbow, regarded the bronze doors with narrowed yellow eyes.
Several years had passed since, in the face of mounting pressure from the
Council, Leia had eliminated her bodyguard of Noghri hunter-killers.
Leia understood it; even before the unfortunate incident of the Barabel
ambassador, there were those who said it ill behooved her to wield a weapon
that had been Palpatine's. Bringing them on this mission had been a terrible
risk.
Do not trust Ashgad, the message had said.
She had sent for them, secretly, just before departure. There were some
risks greater than schism in the Council.
"Technically, it is living flesh, though," said Leia thoughtfully.
"They're synthdroids, Ezrakh. I've seen them in the pleasure domes on
Hesperidium and Carosi. Sculpted synthflesh over metal armatures.