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

they mean. Why?"
"Because I looked it up. Althea means 'the healer.'"
 The orange blaze washed across the bowl of the coupe. "So? Her name is a variation."
I was tempted to leave the matter at that. The truth might well do him more harm than good. Then I
thought again of the strange woman upstairs with her opalescent skin and eyes focused on Otherness.
"No. Aletheia means 'the truth.'" I took a breath. "Garrett, you haven't called up some healing spirit.
Whoever Aletheia is and wherever she comes from, she's mad. I think she believes that she is her name,
that she is the personification of Truth. However she did that trick with the wedding bowl, she did it to
support her fantasy."
"Fantasy." He looked up then. Lifted from the bowl, the torch flame dimmed to blue again. "I forgot to
tell you. After you left for the station I called the Kimbroughs to tell them the bowl was ready. The
wedding's off. The bride eloped this afternoon with another man."
He had gone back to the coupe and the goosebumps had subsided on my spine before it occurred to
me to point that prophesies did not make a healer. By that time it was too late, though; Garrett had
soundproofed himself with concentration.
***


I might have brought up the subject again later as the three of us sat out on the balcony sometime after
midnight, watching the blaze of stars overhead and listening to the chorus of sonic sculptures across the
way fade into silence. The opalescent paleness of Aletheia's skin shone misty in the darkness, turning her
to a phantom curled cross-legged in a basket chair.
She tilted back her head and breathed deeply. "It's good here. Artists ask deep questions, and
honestly desire answers. In too much of the world I have been twisted and raped by people who
consider Truth something to be tailored to order."
I wanted to poke Garrett. See? Listen to the voice of unreason. But I did not. That wedding had
been canceled, and Aletheia understood Garrett. He believed what he wanted to. As long as he thought
this strange woman gave him a weapon to fight fate, I could tell him nothing.
Up the street, a whoop of group laughter broke the quiet. A sonic sculpture whined in response,
setting off others, a ripple of sleepy sharps and flats spreading down the street ahead of the merrymakers
like a bow wave. As they neared us, I recognized several as Garrett's neighbors I had met on previous
visits, including Caroline Edmund-Leigh, the holosymphony composer, and poet Tony Jubal.
They halted below us and Tony called up, "Did you know you're a modern oracle?"
Garrett blinked. "What?"
"Darius Miller's new play, The Man In the Concrete Glider, opened tonight at the Blue Orion Theatre
in Gateside with Kelsi Ferris in the leading role."
"A role the gossip columns say Maya Chaplain moved heaven and earth to land," Caroline added in
the tone of one savoring something delicious. "Didn't I see Maya in your studio a couple of weeks ago
buying a crystal egg?"
"Yes," Garrett replied slowly.
"Well," Tony drawled, "after the opening we attended the cast party, and Kelsi told us that 'someone'
sent her a crystal egg just before the show opened, with an unsigned card in it reading 'A wish for you
and all the cast.' Only a strange thing happened. Kelsi picked up the egg and was holding it, and she
swears it looked perfect, not a crack anywhere in it, when it suddenly fell into a dozen pieces in her
hands."
"And the play didn't lay an egg," another of the women said. "The word from inside sources is that the
critics started raving as they left the theater."
My breath stuck in my chest.
Aletheia laughed, a ringing sound as clear as tapped crystal. "Glass is wonderful, so responsive. They
should have thought of it at Delphi and Dodona."