"Frank Herbert - Destination Void 4 The Ascenscion Factor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

His thoughts again turned to Marica and the wots. The thoughts were not so much thoughts as
dreams. He saw her with the children, hand in hand, traversing an upcoast field in the sunlight.
The single sun was bright but not scorching, there were no bugs. Their bare feet were cushioned
by the fleshy blossoms of a thousand kinds of flowers . . .

A dasher shriek from somewhere below jerked him out of his dream. He knew there was no field
without bugs, nowhere on Pandora to stroll barefoot through blossoms. He knew that Vashon
security and the Warrior's Union were known for their persistence, their efficiency, their
ruthlessness. They were after his wife and their children, and they would find them. His last
hope was that the dasher would find him before they hooked what was left of Marica up here by his
side.




Again we have let another Chaplain/Psychiatrist kill tens of thousands of us -- Islander and
Merman alike. This new C/P, Raja Flattery, calls himself "the Director," but he will see. We
have kissed the ring and bared the throat for the last time.

-- First Shadowbox broadcast, 5 Bunratti 493

First light through the single plasma-glass pane stroked a plain white pillow with its rosy
fingers. It outlined the sparse but colorful furnishings of this cubby in shades of gray. The
cubby itself, though squarely on land and squarely gridded to a continent, reflected traditions of
a culture freely afloat for nearly five centuries on Pandora's seas.

These Islanders, the biowizards of Pandora, grew everything. They grew their cups and bowls, the
famous chairdogs, insulation, bondable organics, rugs, shelves and the islands themselves. This
cubby was organically furnished, and under the old law warranted a heft of supply chits that
converted easily to food coupons. Black-market coupons were a cheap enough price for the Director
to pay to assimilate the Islander culture that had been dashed to the rocks the day he splashed
down on the sea.

As the grip of dawn strengthened into morning it further brightened the single wall-hanging of
clasped hands that enriched this small cubby. Red and blue fishes swam the border, their delicate
fins interlacing broad green leaves of kelp. Orange fin and blue leaf joined at the foot of the
hanging to form a stylized Oracle. The tight stitch of the pattern and its crisp colors all
rippled with the progress of dawn. A sleeper's chest rose and fell gently on the bed beneath
them.

The night and its shadows shrank back from the plasma-glass window at the head of the bed.
Islanders had always enjoyed the light and in building their islands they let it in wherever they
could. They persisted in light, even though most of them were now solidly marooned on land. In
their undersea dwellings Mermen put pictures on their walls of the things they wall out --
Islanders preferred the light, the breezes, the smells of life and the living. This cubby was
small and spare, but light.

This was a legal cubby, regularly inspected, a part of the shopkeeper's quarters. It was a second-
floor street room above the new Ace of Cups coffee shop at Kalaloch harbor. A huge white coffee