"Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Molt Brother" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

was setting, they paused in the freestanding archway.
"The door," explained Sudeen, "to the room without walls." He passed through to join the crowd of tourists.
As the shadows gathered, lines of robed priests climbed the stairs set into the edges of the kyralizth. When the leaders
reached the summit, each stair down each edge of the kite-shaped pyramid was occupied by a colorfully garbed priest,
forming a perfect spectrum.
They were so far away, their chanting could barely be heard; but when it stopped, a hush fell. Above, as if flung out
by the hand of a giant, stars winked into being, and full night was upon them.
Abruptly, there was a blaze atop the kyralizthтАФthe crowning firebasin erupting in its nightly flame. The upper-most
priests lit torches from the basin, illuminating their white robes like immaculate silver columns. They turned and lit the
torches held by the second rank of priests, all dressed in purple. One could barely make out the bulk of the kyralizth
except where the tiny points of light crept down the edges.
The preternatural stillness of the crowd stretched until the bottom priest stepped down and extinguished his torch.
Then the line of priests filed down, extinguishing their torches as they reached the bottom so that the lines of fire
retreated evenly down all sides of the kyralizth, leaving the firebasin at the top to burn until dawn.
As the priests reentered the gate to their private school where none came without invitation, floodlights came on so
that the crowd could move to the parking area.
Zref turned away, teeth clenched over the memory of his childhood hopes. / have no talent worth training. They had
told him so. He had to believe it.
Sudeen took over, leading their client back to the car, covering for Zref as if he knew the pain that lurked be-neath
Zref's stiff facade. And he does.
When he'd been just a young child, Zref had come to the Mautri outer court with hundreds of others to sit for
admission. Day after day he had sat, under the discipline of silence and stillness, the youngest in the courtyard. Day
after day, others had been chosen or had left while he re-mained. But he could not give up while the glowing cer-tainty
in his heart told him that his real life lay there.
His parents, frantic, had searched until they found him. Eight days and nights he had kept his vigil, never showing
disappointment. He was sure on the ninth day that he'd be admittedтАФnot the first human so admitted, but one of the
few.
His parents had picked him up bodily and removed him before he could be chosen. He had struggled against them, and
a white priest had come out.
He could never forget the words of his doom: "You are not to climb the kyralizth here, young Zref. Your path lies
elsewhere." He knew better than to attempt that court-yard again. But the yearning never ceased to eat at him,
especially at sundown when, watching, he could feel the rough handle of the torch in his hand, and its real mean-ing
seemed to bump at the edges of his mind.
"And that completes the tour," Sudeen concluded as he opened the car door for the Interface and completed the credit
transaction. "I hope you found the experience worth your time."
Zref got in, and Sudeen moved the car into the line head-ing down the hill. They were sandwiched between two red
and green striped tour buses.
Zref turned to the man in the back seat. "I hope we've satisfied your curiosity, Sir Brenilak," he said, "because you
have satisfied mine, showing that an Interface can be curi-ous about something other than his work."
The Brenilak gazed out the window, wistfully it seemed to Zref, though he didn't trust his perceptions of the
non-human's moods. "My curiosity is about the human/ kren bhirhir because my employers here have a family
involve-ment with it."
Driving through the downtown night traffic, Sudeen asked, "Which hotel are you staying at?"
"I'll be staying with my employers, in the human colony." He gave them an address. "Would you happen to know
where that is?"
They knew. It was the residence of Hetta and Barinn Ortenau, Zref's parents. Sudeen recovered first. He punched a
new route into the controls and flipped on the traffic monitor. When he couldn't busy himself with that any more, he
asked Zref, "You want to tell him, or shall I?"
"I'll do it," Zref answered, still half turned in his seat to talk to the passenger. "Not that you need to be told. You
already know who we are, don't you?" "I have a probability estimate."