"Kay Kenyon - Tropic of Creation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenyon Kay)

TROPIC OF CREATION
Kay Kenyon
A Bantam Spectra Book /November 2000
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Copyright ┬й 2000 by Kay Kenyon.
Cover art copyright ┬й 2000 by Pam Lee.
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For Donald Maass

My intention is to tell Of bodies changed To different forms.

The heavens and all below them,

Earth and her creatures

All change,

And we, part of creation,

Also must suffer change.

тАФOvid, Metamorphoses

I

Two suns beat down on the eroded hills, cooking the air, making it hard to see the landscape except
through a wavering mirage of heat. Captain Eli Dammond removed his hat, wiping the perspiration from
his forehead, and peered for a moment at the sunтАФnot the primary, but its dwarf sister: small, red, and
swelling in the sky. The dwarf star was no bigger than his thumbnail at arm's length, but even so, it
seemed to stoke the morning's heat to a near boil.

This far from camp the landscape lay barren and uniformтАФgully and dune, gully and duneтАФfor miles. It
looked like so many lands in the Congress Worlds: blasted and sere from war. But here on Null, nature
alone had done the job.

At the crest of the next gully he saw Corporal Willem waving his arm.

"Captain Dammond, over here. It's here." Corporal Willem pointed into the wadi and skidded down the
far side, disappearing from view.