"Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Dushau Trilogy 01 - Dushau" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

reach Arlai privately. Use your leptolizer in my system, and even a Proctor's trace would take all night."

"Proctor's trace," repeated Seum, a kind of creeping horror penetrating his dullness. "Jindigar..."

"Hold fast, zunre. Krinata, we accept your kind offer."

They went down to the tube level and Krinata used her leptolizer to call a larger car than she'd used to
get to work that morning. Even so, the three Dushau filled it. Must remember to use a Number Five
with them! she thought, and clicked her leptolizer into the receptacle. Relaxing, she pivoted the seat to
look at her wilted guests.

Jindigar examined the comunit, then tried his leptolizer in its slot. "No. Only the new design will fit this.
Krinata?"

"I have the old-fashioned machine at home. I'll just take off the adapter for you. Only a few minutes."

The indigo faces before her set into field-hardened endurance. It must have seemed like centuries to
them, but was really only minutes. The lift put them a few steps from her apartment door. When her
leptolizer beam touched the door, it evoked her moronic apartment Sentient who began her routine
greeting and announcement of supper being served.

"Wait a moment, Fiella," she said. "Company." She apologized to the Dushau. "Fiella isn't in Arlai's class,
but she's totally reliable." Then she dropped her leptolizer into its home slot and asked, "Fiella, how
would you like a friend to visit you for the evening?"

Fiella put her simulacrum, an overweight grandmotherly human, on the sitting-room screen and made
flustered sounds. Krinata warned Fiella, then pulled her leptolizer and the adapter out and motioned
Jindigar to insert his and evoke Arlai. "They'll get along well enough, I think. Fiella is always polite, and
Arlai seems... cosmopolitan."

"That he is," avered Jindigar.

Seum and Dinai had stretched out flat on the rose carpet and were doing exercises as if they hurt all over,
which she was sure they did after the convulsions. The piol sat watching them, head cocked to one side.

The screen came alive with a full-length view of Fiella standing on a pink field, just the color of the
sitting-room carpet, as Arlai walked on screen. The two greeted each other as if they were incarnates,
and turned to face their audience. "How may we..." began Arlai, and then seemed to notice Seum and
Dinai. "Are you trying to knock yourselves out?" he asked sharply.

They stopped doing leg lifts, and Seum answered, rolling on his side. "From what we've learned, Arlai,
we'd better get back into shape again quickly. Is there any faster way?"

"You might eat something and get some sleep first!" Arlai answered with the anger of the overprotective.

When Jindigar said, "Agreed," Fiella glanced at Arlai with genuine respect. "Arlai, send usтАФand
KrinataтАФa good meal, then we'll confer over these latest developments. Meanwhile, get us an update on
Finemar's condition."

"Done!" answered Arlai, earning another marveling look from Fiella. "Survey Base Infirmary has been