"Lichtenberg,.Jacqueline.-.Dushau.Trilogy.02.-.Farfetch.(V1.0)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

"I've wanted to think of the three of us that way." Zunre, those bound to the same Oliat, were considered closer than blood relatives. "Only Jindigar doesn't accept me."

"But he does, and that's the problem. Krinata, do you understand why he mustn't?ЧIt isn't my place to say it, but I see you gravitating to Jindigar's company, and I see him fighting to protect himself and the Archive he carries, andЧit's hard to watch your zunre hurting each other."
He's thinking of Desdinda too. She was zunre to us, if only for a moment. "I've never meant to hurt JindigarЧor any Dushau."
<'You were there when Grisnilter promised Jindigar he could take the Archive from him and still work Oliat without the Archive interfering. Jindigar didn't believe itЧGrisnilter knew nothing of Oliat dangersЧbut he took the Archive, anyway."
Krinata remembered the windowless bus in which they'd been prisoners. Grisnilter, the oldest Dushau she'd ever seen and a famous Historian, lay across the backseat of the bus, dying. Grisnilter was custodian of a historical record, the Archive, a living memory impressed into his mind, and it would perish with his death if he couldn't impress it on another Dushau with the talent to become Historian.
"It hasn't given Jindigar any trouble," offered Krinata.
"Not until Desdinda's death," answered Frey. "He tries, but he can't hide it from me. He's erratically accessing the Archive, and he's frightened. It's a... a sacred trust. He mustn't mar that record, he mustn't become lost in it, he mustn't lose it behind grieving scars, and he mustn't die before he can pass it on to a Historian. Do you understand?"
"Dushau memory works differently from human." Krinata nodded. "You re-experience emotional pain every time you access a memory of something that happened before it."
"Yes, and Jindigar was always very good at farfetching, despite his many scars and lack of Historian's training."
Farfetching was the eidetic recall of memories thousands

of years past. The danger was to go episodic, to become lost in memory, a fatal form of insanity for a Dushau. Grisnilter had thought Jindigar immune to thatЧbut he wasn't.
"Now he's afraid that his lack of training," continued Frey, "may cause him to betray a trust. Everything seems to evoke the Archive for himЧeven just talking to you."
"So that's why he won't attempt the triad againЧ"
Frey shook his head. "Jindigar's been qualified to Center an Oliat longer than I've lived. I couldn't guess at all the factors he's considering when he says no. I'd never dare go against his judgment."
"Even when it may be impaired by his personal problems? Even when the survival of the whole group may
depend on it? Frey, you're surely old enough to think for
yourself!" She couldn't believe she'd just said that. "I didn't
mean "
Frey laughed. "And you, zunre, are likewise old enough to think for yourself." He sobered. "Krinata, we may be zunre, but I don't wish to acquire ephemeral friends. I don't know on what grounds to appeal to youЧprofessional, personal, or ethical. I can only begЧstay away from him."
"The group is too small to promise that, but I'll try not to hurt him." He should have told me. If Frey was right, that explained why none of her arguments affected Jindigar's decision. He didn't fear her infirmity, but his own, and his own was not aggravated by the Cassrians.
As the young Dushau gathered his canteen to rise, Jindigar mounted the dune to join them. "Storm's right," he called as he drew close, "there's no way to fix the brake on the water sled without tearing it apart. And there's no time for that." He surveyed the western horizon where the dirty pall was creeping higher into the magenta sky. "Frey?"
The youth's eyes flicked to Krinata, then fixed on the ground as he replied, "Yes, I've been studying the storm.

We're not going to make it at this rate. But now that we're this far, there's nothing to do but try."
He said we could make it. Is Jindigar's judgment slipping?
"With the sun down we'll be able to pick up the pace," argued Jindigar.
"Jindigar," Krinata said, "a triad could read the situation better. Perhaps if we change course, the storm would only graze us? Or maybe we can find a closer shelter?"
Below them the line of march was forming up under the Lehiroh's guidance. Frey offered, "It's your decision, of course, but if you judge the danger to the Archive from the storm greater than the danger from the triad, I'd be willing to attempt the triad with Krinata again. I think I might be able to hold it this time, and it would increase our range."
"What's changed your mind?" asked Jindigar.
"That storm frightens me more than Krinata does. I've never been in a sandstorm before."
"That's not it. That storm frightens me too." As Jindigar compared Krinata and Frey, then gazed into the sunset, she wondered what she'd said to win Frey's confidence. Then Jindigar muttered, "Perhaps we should attempt a triad, though it may incapacitate Krinata."
"Jindigar," she pled, "just try it for a second or two. We have to get a glimpse of what's really out there. And I'm not as fragile as you think!"
The Lehiroh were coaxing the water sled back into the air and turning it so the rear end would now lead. Jindigar glanced down, then fixed his back to the scene, agreeing reluctantly. "Just for a second or two." He issued technical instructions to Frey, then gathered Krinata's eyes.
Presently she felt a wall enclosing the two Dushau, shutting her out. It dissolved and re-formed behind her, and then she lost touch with the sand dune, and the people below.

Boiling, raging, churning storm, a billion particles seething skyward, organized as a living being; the helpless, abandoned sliver of metal half swallowed by a dune; scattering of stickfigures, glittering against the sand in artificial desert cloaks; line of massive lumps floating beside a long ridge; and beyond, slightly north of their course, the rising ground broken, scraggly bushes, a fan shape of dead bushes leading to the mouth of a dry wash whose sides were cave-riddled.
She was the sand, the wind, the struggling life, and it was all one, its oneness a painful beauty. She was also the storm, her anger rising at the escape of the sparkling parts of the sliver she needed to bury, to destroy. She looked out of the whirling chaos of storm, and she also watched herself looking out, undisturbed by four loci of perception. She saw her face, as if in a mirror, indigo against dirty magenta, bridgeless Dushau nose, hate-filled indigo eyes, sickly white teethЧDesdinda's face. She was herself and hated Desdinda, and was Desdinda and hated the human intruder and Jindigar, the Aliom priest who had befouled an Archive with his Inversions. Destroy!
Krinata felt the ravening madness reaching out to shake the very sky, and everything in her defied it. Then, another presence was attracted by the turmoil, a sevenfold presence that stretched her brain and distorted her mind as if to rip her identity apart. She didn't hear herself scream.
A wide, meandering river approached a sheer cliff, and between its bend and the cliff, dirt roads cut across an area strewn with half-finished foundations and piles of logs. On one side a stockade was going up, on the other, orbital landers were parked.
A subaudible hum shimmered through the scene, a growing vibration. She could feel everything in that settlement beginning to thrum to a complex rhythm, linking and affecting everything and everyone else. Her teeth, her bones, every nerve vibrated with increasing energy. She was being

shaken apart from within as another Dushau woman's face formed. She was lovely, about the same coloring as Jindigar. As the vibration increased, her serene pleasure turned to recognition, shock, and then alarm.
Krinata, her heart stuttering as if she hadn't breathed in minutes, her bones aching with inaudible hot sound, saw through a screen of black dots Jindigar's face suffused with a naked pleasure that was embarrassing. Then everything went black. She never felt herself hit the sand.
When she came to, the sun had barely moved, and Storm was bending over Jindigar, who was muttering, "Darllanyu, darllanyu..." while Frey knelt over him arguing, "No, it's sunset, not dawn. Jindigar!"
She sat up, holding her breath, remembering Frey had been afraid that Jindigar could become lost in the Archive, episodic, disoriented beyond cure. That settlement they'd seen must have been from the Archive. If he thought it was now dawnЧ
Storm saw her clutching her pounding head. "Krinata!" He came to her. "What happened?"
"Not sureЧsomeЧooohhh!" She hurt all over.
Jindigar, on his knees, shaking his head to clear it, saw her. "YouЧ" he started. "Desdinda!"