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

He watched her intently, one hand straying to her cheek for a moment before he yanked it back. "I'm
sorry," he said again, then, "Krinata, I can talk to you. Do you understand what that means? Do you
know why?"

"Because you knew me when you were Kamminth's Outreach?"

He nodded. "Partly." He turned away, taking the piol off his head and setting it on the floor, as he
perched on the divan on the other side of the hearth and motioned her to join him, their backs to the
others. As she sat beside him, he inched away from her and clenched his hands together. "It's because
you were familiar when suddenly everything had become strangeтАФstrangely familiar. Rantan even looks
like Turminor! It's as if we're lost three hundred years in the past." He glanced at her. "Dissolution distorts
perceptions. I couldn'tтАФnone of us could force ourselves to look up recent events."

At last she understood. Loss of sanity, loss of orientation amid the vast, echoing caverns of their
millennia-long memories, that was the chief terror and very real danger of the Dushau, for it meant an
inevitable and early death. Remembering what her overly vivid imagination had conjured for her moments
ago, knowing it was the palest shadow of what he experienced, she said, "In your place, I couldn't have
either."

He studied her. "I may be Kamminth's most experienced officer, but even I've never had to change
Offices during a Dissolution. Until you walked in, I didn't know..." His disobedient hand strayed again to
her cheek, seeking contact with a slippery and wavering reality. "May I?"
She suppressed the jab of terror, focused on a worn spot in the carpet, and put both her arms around his
chestтАФthey barely met behind himтАФand hugged him. He wrapped both his arms about her, bending his
head until his napped cheek rested against hers, and surrendered to the trembling. It would be ever so
much better for him if she were Oliat. But only Dushau, of all the hundreds of species of the Allegiancy,
had the talent for joining into a team resonant to the ecology of a new worldтАФ able to evaluate its
habitability for other known species, to determine if a planet harbored a sentient or pre-sentient species.
And very few Dushau had the Oliat talent.

Krinata sensed the other four Dushau steadying as Jindigar did. When he finally raised his head, fixing her
with his deep midnight eyes, he seemed to have become Outreach in truth. As he spoke again, his voice
descended to its normal register, somewhere near the resonance of her bone marrow. "Kamminth's
thanks you."

She accepted that gracefully, then touched up a timecheck on her leptolizer. "How long until your
Dissolution is completed?"

"Forewarn, our Inreach, is still unconscious. We'll be held in limbo like this until she recovers. But now,
thanks to you, I can Outreach for her. In a few days, we'll be able to give the debriefing your department
is so anxious for."

She twisted on the seat, offended. "I didn't come for the department!" Appalled at her inappropriate
anger, she added, "I came because Zinzik is making a terrible mistake, and I wanted to find some way to
stop it."

The piol was clawing its way up Jindigar's white pants. Jindigar grinned at it, showing sharp blue teeth
with darker blue grinders behind, and gathered the creature up, lovingly swinging it over his head and
nuzzling it, laughing at its delighted squeals. He handed her the piol and got to his feet. "If you didn't come
simply to start the debriefing..."