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

patch here. And they smell different, even when immature."

"Oh, I never had a piol, though I once had a cat. I thought about getting a dog after my mother died." She
hadn't meant to say that. From there, it took only a few gentle questions by Jindigar to elicit the whole
story of her mother's death from thransaxx and its complications.

"She must have been a fine woman."

To change the subject, she asked, "Does he have a name?"

"Why, no. There hasn't been time to think." He tried to smile, but she could see strained grief behind the
facade. "Do you have any ideas?"

The picture of Rantan's livid face as the piol munched on the prize fish with its festoons of rainbow fins
spread about him made Krinata say, "Why not call him Imperial Fisher, Imp for short?"

"Irreverent, but appropriate."

"You're not smiling. I thought it was funny."

"I'm sorry." He sighed hugely and flicked his fingers over the keypads, sending text and diagrams flowing
over the screens in three dimensions.

Abashed, she remembered that his only memory of Imp's greatest moment was the pain of the deaths of
three of his zunre. "Are you planning to finish that report so you can leave in the morning with Trinarvil?"

He turned his head to inspect her with astonishment, then answered, "It's going to take longer than that to
chronicle over four hundred years. When this... grieving is over, I'll have completely lost touch with those
memories, barricaded them behind a kind of emotional scar tissue. So I have to finish this before I..." He
shuddered.

"Look, if you'd rather be aloneтАФ"

He just looked at her, unable to answer.

"After I saw you had the piol, I came out because I thought you might like to talk. It's helpful to humans
to talk out a grieving. That's what funerals and wakes are for." She began to uncurl her legs. "But
sometimes it doesn't work across species lines. Perhaps it's too soon."

He put out a hand to halt her. "The grieving will go on hard and long, Krinata. I must ask you to forgive.
Let me tell you what Trinarvil said."

"I understood most of it, and got the rest from..." Suddenly, the full import of the conversation bit her like
a cannon blast. And she knew what had wakened her after the sleeper had turned off. The Dushau really
believed the end was at hand, and that Rantan was going to make them his scapegoat. Despite all of that,
Jindigar was going to honor his vows of fealty, taken hundreds of years ago to another Emperor. What a
beautiful man! How could anyone believe those lies! She didn't know what Zinzik was trying to
accomplish, but it must be that he was so intent on his goal of peace and prosperity among the Allied
Species that he had allowed his advisors to lead him into a ghastly blunder. And if it went on much
longer, it could be very dangerous indeed.