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

the Mautri school even way out here in the is-lands!"
Without waiting for her reply, he gripped her upper arms and swung her around, leaping into the air with explosive joy.
"Maybe we'll be the ones who actually find the City of a Million Legends!"
Then he took off down the trail, talking in loud bursts. She let herself be pulled along while her mind could only
produce her surmother's scathing remark about the Mautri: Their ideal is to live without bhirhir. Home wreckers!

Chapter 2
Zref Ortenau felt a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slipping from his grasp. He hadn't felt such a bleak panic since he'd
been rejected by the Mautri school at the age of five. For the thousandth time, he took the tantalizing letter out of his
pocket. Mist from the fountain behind him damp-ened the heavy document, a formal scholarship to Founders
University on Rhobank V, with all fees and expenses paid. For one person.
As he folded the thing away, his bhirhir said, "It's not just that you want to go; it's that you have to go, isn't it?"
"Sudeen, IтАФ"
"You're human." It was a flat statement, but it opened an issue that had never really come up between them be-fore. A
human could survive the loss of a bhirhir; a kren usually didn't, unless he was a Mautri priest. "If we can't raise the
money," said the kren, not looking at Zref, "you go ahead, and I'll go back to Mautri."
He's lying. He'd rather die than go back to Mautri. Zref knew the shuddering panic that overcame his bhirhir at the
mere thought of the Mautri school. Sudeen had the psychic talent to be welcomed there, but at his first adult molt, he
had fled the school, almost dying in molt before Zref had found him and renewed their old pledge of friend-ship on a
deeper level by pledging bhirhir. Zref shook his head.'No matter what, I won't leave you behind, Sudeen."
His venom sack quivering, Sudeen said, "I shouldn't have said that. I know better." His words were swallowed by the
roar of a space shuttle taking off.
Zref and Sudeen were sitting on the edge of the fountain in the center of the plaza at the Firestrip shuttleport, waiting
for a customer. In addition to the intraworld traffic, today the field was receiving all the passengers from the vast
sunhopper Mormorant III.
At intervals, the travelers would emerge from the port building's broad array of wide doors and swarm down the
shallow steps into the plaza. The stream would divide around the fountain, giving the two freelance tourist guides a
good look at potential customers.
There was a Jernal businessman whizzing along on its six spindly legs as if weightless, a Theaten tourist standing
head and shoulders above the crowd and seeming like a stretched-out human with a sunburn, and one of the
blue-skinned humanoids from Sirwin trying politely to keep a hat on his head to hide his horns. But the majority of the
crowd was kren, with a heavy sprinkling of humans: Fire-strip natives returning from their holidays, not customers.
It was already midsummer, and they hadn't made enough money to put a down payment on passage to Rhobank for
Sudeen.

As the noise abated, Sudeen leaned his elbows on his knees, letting his webbed hands dangle between them. "Zref, if I
have to, I'll go beg the money from my sur-father. He wouldn't approve, but in the end he'd do it."
"Not unless you said I was leaving without you." He looked his bhirhir in the eyes. "Could you lie like that?"
"No."
"Besides, your father said we had to earn the money. If we go beg it from your surfather, that would be setting bhirhir
against bhirhir. I couldn't live with that on my conscience. Could you?"
"Are you trying to shame me by being more kren than I am after I called you human?"
"No. Sudeen, family is family, kren or human." Zref looked around the nearly deserted plaza. "We've seen the last of
Mormorant's passengers. We ought to quit for the day."
"It's too early to go home."
"You wouldn't have said that last week when Sdilia was living with you," said Zref.
For the last two seasons he had been living at Sudeen's family home while his bhirhir experienced the most intense
mating Zref had yet seen him through; the mating had been childless and painful for the whole family. Now that it was
over, Zref faced the prospect of having to confront his parents with their money-making project. Unlicensed tour
guiding wasn't illegal, but it wouldn't bring much credit to his family. It was even worse, Zref felt, now that they'd