"George R. R. Martin - The Glass Flower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

naked flesh. He is a Liar came the whisper in my head. I will find the truth for you, Wisdom.

"Good,├втВмтАв I told him.
Tr'k'nn'r, my Fyndii mindmute, sang to me in a high shrill voice at the edge of human hearing. He loomed
above them all like a stickman in a child's crude drawing, a stickman three meters tall, excessively jointed,
bending in all the wrong places at all the wrong angles, assembled of old bones turned grey as ash by
some ancient fire. But the crystalline eyes beneath his brow ridge were fervid as he sang, and fragrant
black fluids ran from the bottom of his lipless vertical mouth. His song was of pain and screaming and
nerves set afire, of secrets revealed, of truth dragged steaming and raw from all its hidden crevasses.

"No,├втВмтАв I said to him. ├втВм┼УHe is a cyborg. If he feels pain it is only because he wills it. He would shut
down his receptors and turn you off, loneling, and your song would turn to silence."

The neurowhore Shayalla Loethen smiled with resignation. ├втВм┼УThen there's nothing for me to work on
either, Wisdom?"

"I'm not sure,├втВмтАв I admitted. ├втВм┼УHe has no obvious genitalia, but if there's anything organic left inside
him, his pleasure centers might be intact. He claims to have been male. The instincts might still be viable.
Find out."

She nodded. Her body was soft and white as snow, and sometimes as cold, when she wanted cold, and
sometimes white hot, when that was her desire. Those lips that curled upwards now with anticipation
were crimson and alive. The garments that swirled around her changed shape and color even as I
watched, and sparks began to play along her fingertips, arcing across her long, painted nails.

"Drugs?├втВмтАв asked Braje, biomed, gengineer, poisoner. She sat thinking, chewing some tranq of her own
devising, her swollen body as damp and soft as the swamps outside. ├втВм┼УTruetell? Agonine? Esperon?"

"I doubt it,├втВмтАв I said.

"Disease,├втВмтАв she offered. ├втВм┼УManthrax or gangrene. The slow plague, and we've got the cure?├втВмтАв
She giggled.

"No,├втВмтАв I said curtly.

And the rest, and on and on. They all had their suggestions, their ways of finding out things I wanted to
know, of making themselves useful to me, of earning my gratitude. Such are my Apostles. I listened to
them, let myself be carried along by the babble of voices, weighed, considered, handed out orders, and
finally I sent them all away, all but one.

Khar Dorian will be the one to kiss me when that day finally comes. I do not have to be a Wisdom to
know that truth.

The rest of them want something of me. When they get it, they will be gone. Khar got his desire long ago,
and still he comes back and back and back, to my world and my bed. It is not love of me that brings him
back, nor the beauty of the young body I wear, nor anything as simple as the riches he earns. He has
grander things in mind.

"He rode with you,├втВмтАв I said. ├втВм┼УAll the way from Lilith. Who is he?"