"Lee Killough - Deathglass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Killough Lee)

"I don't know." He caught his lip between his teeth.
 "No trick," Aletheia said. "It is what is." She padded away up the stairs.
I followed, leaving Garrett staring into the bowl in fascination.
Aletheia must have headed straight for the balcony. I found her there leaning against the rail, looking up
at the snow-capped peaks. Afternoon light played purple and blue over her hair and soaked into her
skin, intensifying the glow until she looked almost incandescent. Around us curled a cool breeze filled
with the scent of mountain pine, the laughing voices of the tourists window-shopping along the street
below, and the mixed chorus of a dozen sonic sculptures in the studio opposite.
"I do nothing to the glass," Aletheia said, without looking at me.
I started. "You only prophesy and read minds."
She stroked the railing. "I don't prophesy. What is, is."
"That's how you plan to heal Garrett?"
Now she looked around, though she barely glanced at me before her focus slipped. "I never said I
could heal him. Help him, though, yes."
"He thinks you have a cure. He says your name means 'the healer.'"
It came out more accusingly than I intended. Her gaze focused, and the intensity made her eyes glitter
more jewel-like than ever. Light shimmered gold and pink around her skin. "He believes what he wishes
to believe. He doesn't think clearly." She sighed. "He doesn't ask the right questions."
The light from her was beginning to give me a headache. I frowned irritably. "What questions? What
do questions have to do with helping him?"
"I cannot seek. I must be sought. I am Aletheia."
I am Aletheia. She said it like a title. Names. Something jogged in my head, but of course when I
tried to identify it, it slipped out of reach.
I stared into the amethyst eyes for a minute, groping in vain for the elusive thought, then left the balcony
and went back downstairs. Garrett had returned to painting the coupe.
"Part of my luggage is still at the cabletrain station," I told him. "I'm going after it."
He nodded without looking up.
But I went to the library, not the station.
***


Aletheia had supper ready by the time I returned to the studio. It was a brief, quiet affair. Garrett
bolted his food so he could go back to work, and Aletheia stared at and through him into whatever other
dimension she saw. I ate in silence, too, wondering what to do with the information I had learned. Saying
anything could destroy the relief Garrett thought Aletheia brought. Silence, on the other hand, would only
sharpen his despair when the "cure" failed.
And on the other, third hand, I could not stay forever, and what might happen to him when I finally left
him with this mad-eyed woman?
Afterward, I followed Garrett downstairs and sat watching while he fused another layer of glass on the
coupe.
"A commission?" I asked.
He looked up from the coupe and gas torch, eyes purple behind the didymium lenses of his goggles.
"The winner's cup for the Diana Mountain Road Race next week. It's their seventy-fifth year and they
wanted something nostalgic and appropriately commemorative."
"A coupe is certainly appropriate for a road race."
Admittedly, the humor was feeble, but I expected him to at least smile. He did not.
I bit my lip, then taking a deep breath, asked, "Who told you Aletheia's name means 'the healer'?"
Garrett did not answer immediately. The flame of his torch flared from blue to blinding orange against
the glass. Through the goggles, though, I knew it would look only pink. After a minute, he said, "It's
something I remember from when Mother was pregnant with you, a discussion about names and what