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

cup swung from a steel rod beneath the window.

Almost synchronous with the sleeper's breathing came the slup slup of waves against the bulkhead
below. Respirations caught, then resumed at the occasional splashings of a waking squawk and the
wind-chime effect of sail riggings that clapped against a host of masts.

Dawn brightened the room enough to reveal a seated figure beside the bed. The posture was one of
alert stillness. This stillness was broken by an occasional move of cup to mouth, then back to
the knee. The figure sat, back to the wall, beside the plaz and facing the hatch. First light


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glinted from a shining, intricately inlaid Islander cup of hardwood and mother-of-pearl. The hand
that held the cup was male, neither delicate nor calloused.

The figure leaned forward once, noting the depth of the sleeper's odd, open-eyed slumber. The
progress of light across the bay outside their room was reflected in the hardening of shadows
inside, and their relentless crawl.

The watcher, Ben Ozette, pulled the cover higher over the sleeper's bare shoulder to ward off
morning dampness. The pupils in her green irises stayed wide with the onset of dawn. He closed
her eyes for her with his thumb. She didn't seem to mind. The shudder that passed over him
uncontrollably was not due to the morning chill.

She was a picture of white -- white hair, eyelashes, eyebrows and a very fair porcelain skin. Her
shaggy white hair was cropped around her face, falling nearly to her shoulders in the back. It
was a perfect frame to those green, bright eyes. His hand strayed to the pillow, then back.

His profile in the light revealed the high cheekbones, aquiline nose and high eyebrows of his
Merman ancestry. In his years as a reporter for Holovision, Ben Ozette had become famous, his
face as familiar planetwide as that of a brother or a husband. Listeners worldwide recognized his
voice immediately. On their Shadowbox broadcasts, however, he became writer and cameramaster and
Rico got out in the lights -- in disguise, of course. Now their family, friends, coworkers would
feel the snap of Flattery's wrath.

They hadn't exactly had time to plan. During their weekly interviews, they both noticed how
everyone, including compound security, stayed well out of microphone range as they taped. The
next time they walked the grounds as they taped, interviewing with gusto. Then last night they
simply walked out. Rico did the rest. The prospect of being hunted by Flattery's goons dried
Ben's mouth a little. He sipped a little more water.

Maybe it's true, maybe she's a construction, he thought. She's too perfectly beautiful to be an
accident.

If the Director's memos were right, she was a construction, something grown by the kelp, not
someone born of a human. When dredged up at sea she was judged by the examining physician to be
"a green-eyed albino female, about twenty, in respiratory distress secondary to ingestion of sea
water; agitated, recent memory excellent, remote memory judged to be poor, possibly absent. . . ."