"Christopher Hinz - Paratwa 03 - The Paratwa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hinz Christopher)

dominated by soaring pines, rose up and vanished into the heavily clouded skies of Irrya. It was the
gloomiest day the lion could recall in many a month: damp and cool, with sharp gusts sweeping down
from the cylinder's central core, lacing the tall trees, showering the ground with fresh pine needles.
Perhaps his aching muscle had been stimulated by the morning's abnormal ecospheric conditions.

Irrya's weather programmers, despite a wealth of opposition, had fought a hard political battle to make
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today gloomy, as per their complex schedule, formulated months in advance. That schedule indicated to
them that the sociopsychological well-being of the populace required periodic alterations in the status
quo. Despite notable opposition, the weather programmers had been most insistent that the local Irryan
government not hinder today's onslaught of unpleasant skies.

Local freelancers had been covering the spirited debate. Fine weather advocates remained in the
majority, most of them virulently opposed to sun blotting. Even though the Irryan Governor herself had
publicly reasoned that today's shrouded skies had been the only such atmospheric alteration in the past
two and a half months, her statements had failed to win the majority. The fine weather advocates
demanded the continuation of the Irryan normтАФseventy-two degrees, low humidity, near-cloudless
skies.

In these times of impending crisis, they argued, Irrya, our seat of intercolonial government, needs the
consistency of pure undaunted sunshine in order to function at its highest level. This is not the time to go
mucking around with the weather, not with the Ash Ock servant,Meridian , soon to arrive in the
Colonies, harbinger to the as-yet-undetected fleet of returning Paratwa starships. For all we know, our
217 cylinders are about to be invaded and conquered by our ancient enemy.

But another faction in the weather struggle argued just as vocally that a little change in day-to-day routine
was good for the soul, that some overcast skies might serve to remind people that their ancestors on the
planet had been forced to live without any potent forms of weather control throughout most of Earth's
history. The pro-change advocates also suggested that too many days of perfect weather could lull
people everywhere into false feelings of immunity. Some of them were even lobbying for more extreme
atmospheric alterations, such as thunderstorms.

The lion recalled a memory from childhood: a T-storm in his home Colony of Lamalan, he and his
mother huddled on their front porch, watching a pair of figures creep along their neighbor's yard. That
had been Jerem Marth's introduction to the creatures who had forever altered his life. On the day of that
thunderstorm, he had met two men who were not really two men. He had encountered his first Paratwa.

The lion knelt beside one of the bushes, checked for tiny pinch bugs on the underside of the azul
rosesтАФone of Irrya's unique, difficult-to-eliminate, garden pests. With his other hand, he continued to
knead the aching muscle in his lower back.

A sigh escaped him. As Nick had pointed out weeks ago, people everywhere seemed to be focusing
more and more on negligible issues in order to avoid the one that scared them the most: the imminent
return of the Paratwa starships. The intercolonial entertainment index had reached an all-time high;
everyone sought escape, however nebulous and temporary, from the grim reality that a race of violent
creatures, who might just possess enough technology to destroy the Colonies, were on their way back.