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

"Delphi glass," Tony said. "I like the sound of that. I think I'll use it in my next poem."
The group trooped on. Garrett stared after them until they turned the corner out of sight, then turned to
Aletheia. "You knew. When Miss Chaplain picked up the egg, you said 'It won't do her any good.'" He
smiled thinly. "Do you still think she's mad, Dane?"
Not mad, no, but... "I don't know what she is."
Darkness turned Aletheia's eyes to obsidian, but they still glittered, reflecting the light from below. "I
am Aletheia."
Garrett's smile vanished, uncertainty suddenly in his eyes as he watched Aletheia. Was he
remembering what I told him her name meant? My gut knotted in sympathy and self-recrimination. Why
had I said anything? At least he had had hope before.
This is better for him, though.
The words sounded so clearly in my head that I thought Aletheia spoke aloud, but when I glanced
toward her, her lips never moved. I stared, then frowned angrily. Better! How could this be better?
Aletheia smiled. In my head her voice said, Watch.
***


I watched. Over the next few days I watched Garrett throwing himself into his work with grim haste. I
watched Aletheia. And I watched the glass, examining each piece before and after annealing. Sometimes
they changed. When Aletheia put them in the oven, pieces came out with designs that had not been
present before.
Like the vase a woman commissioned as a gift for her very wealthy fianc├й. Garrett etched her portrait
into the crystal, and from the front her stunning beauty showed to perfection. At any other angle,
however, the face twisted, revealing vanity, selfishness, and avarice.
And like the Road Race coupe.
Aletheia's soft intake of breath brought both Garrett and me running to bend anxiously over the
coupe.
At first I wondered what she had seen. The original design appeared intact. The shapes of antique race
cars drifted all through the streaked glass, some visible on the outside surface, some from inside the bowl,
others as phantoms below the surface, like memories half-forgotten, or competitors obscured by dust.
Turning the coupe produced neither new shapes in the glass nor altered the ones already there. Then I
noticed the light. Coming through the bowl it looked not golden but pulsing, flickering scarlet, and where
it danced around the cars, the silhouettes sank into twisted frames stained a bloody red.
My gut knotted. Another addition to the Delphi collection?
"What kind of disaster are you wishing on us this time?" Garrett said softly.
Aletheia regarded him solemnly. "I don't make the future. What is, is."
Garrett traced the rim of the coupe, following the bead with his finger... around and around and
around.
***


The day of the race, we watched it on television, but not like most viewers, I am sure. We sat in
silence, Garrett's and my eyes fixed intently on the screen. Apprehension chased along my spine.
Aletheia-- I wish I knew what Aletheia felt or saw. She curled cross-legged in a dark armchair that
intensified her glowing pallor, face expressionless, hands relaxed in her lap, jewel eyes focused past the
television on... whatever.
For three-quarters of its distance, the race went well. A car spun out here and there. A French car
scraped the barrier at the edge of the drop-off on the outside of a sharp switchback. One American's tire
blew out. A billowing cloud of white smoke announced the demise of an Italian engine. None of it
serious, except perhaps in the viewpoint of the Italian, who stormed around his car with waving arms,