"Matthew Hughes - A Herd of Opportunity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Matt)

it." He threw the shantytown a final glare and descended the steps.

"Master," said Bandar, "what have you told these people?"

"You need not be concerned," was the preceptor's reply.
Bandar was prepared to argue, though it was a rare student of the Institute of Historical Inquiry who
would even voice a question to a senior fellow like Preceptor Huffley, let alone challenge him. But the
young man had been conscious of a growing apprehension ever since they had arrived at the
Sequestrance. "The Eminence holds a vast anger that strains a thin leash," he said. "I doubt he responds
well to disappointment."

Huffley's face stiffened. "It is not a student's place..." he began, but was cut off by the clanging of metal
on metal. Bandar turned and saw a man standing in the center of the central square, beating with a bar of
black iron on a circle of the same metal suspended from a wooden frame. Across the Sequestrance, all
of the robed men stopped what they had been doing and converged on the main building, many of them
pausing at the well to dip a ladle into a water barrel and drink deep.

"Come," said Huffley. "While they're occupied."

He led the way to the gap where the wall was nearing completion. Bandar noticed that there was no gate,
nor any timbers from which one might be fashioned, and told his teacher that the absence seemed
peculiar.

"These people are, by definition, peculiar," Huffley said. "They would not otherwise have secluded
themselves out in the desert on an unfashionable and barely habitable world."

They passed through the gap and followed the west wall until they came to a path that led down into the
other settlement. Huffley continued to discourse on the people who had paid their way to Gamza. Bandar
suspected his attention was being diverted from his earlier question, but he listened with at least a show of
the polite deference expected of a student of the Institute.

"Malabar heads a sect that has broken away from the Revered Society of Hydromants on Ballyanhowe,"
the preceptor said.

Bandar was familiar with both the cult and the world. Ballyanhowe was one of the Fundamental
Domains, settled long ago during the great effloration from Old Earth that ended humanity's infancy. It
was an old world now: rich, mellowed, and given over to the esoteric pursuits devised by peoples whose
wants were won without toil. Hydromancy was an ancient art occasionally revived among such leisured
populations. Its practitioners gazed into pools of standing liquid, usually purified water but sometimes oils
or natural essences, seeking a deeper acquaintance with the universe that lay without or within.

"The Eminence was dissatisfied with the practices of the Revered Society," Huffley said. "He experienced
an inspiration that insights are more penetrating if the contemplated liquid 'originates within the seeker,' as
he put it."

"You mean they're all sitting there staring into reeking bowls of their own...."

"Who are we to quibble with another's inspiration?" Huffley said. They had reached the bottom of the
slope. The scholar chose an alleyway and set off toward the hotel, whose upper story was visible beyond
the sprawl of tents and towables.