"Julian May - Diamond Mask" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

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Diamond Mask
Book 2 of the Galactic Milieu Trilogy
By Julian May

Scanned and proofed by BW-SciFi
Release Date: July, 1st, 2002


Every culture gets the magic it deserves.
DUDLEY YOUNG, Origins of the Sacred

A mask tells us more than a face.
OSCAR WILDE, Intentions

Sancta Illusio, ora pro nobis.
FRANZ WERFEL, Star of the Unborn

PROLOGUE

KAUAI, HAWAII, EARTH
12 AUGUST 2113

He knew it had to be some kind of miracleтАФperhaps one programmed by Saint Jack the Bodiless
himself. The misty rain of the Alakai Swamp ceased, the gray sky that had persisted all day broke
open suddenly and flaunted glorious expanses of blue, a huge rainbow haloed Mount Waialeale over
to the east... and a bird began to sing.
Bat├иge! That birdтАФcould it be the one? After four futile days?
The tall, skinny old man dropped to his knees in the muck, slipped out of his backpack
straps, and let the pack fall into the tussocks of dripping grass. Muttering in the Canuck patois
of northern New England, he pulled his little audiospectrograph from its waterproof pouch with
fingers that trembled from excitement and hit the RECORD pad. The hidden songster warbled on. The
old man pressed SEEK. The device's computer compared the recorded birdsong with that of 42,429
avian species (Indigenous Terrestrial, Indigenous Exotic, Introduced, Retroevolved, and
Bioengineered) stored in its data files. The MATCH light blinked on and the instrument's tiny
display read:

O'O-A'A (MOHO BRACCATUS). ONLY ON ISL OF KAUAI, EARTH. IT. VS.

The man said to himself: Damn right you're Very Scarce. Even rarer than the satanic nightjar
or the miniature tit-babbler! But I gotcha at last, p'tit merdeux, toi.
The song cut off and a discordant keet-keet rang out. Something black with flashes of chrome
yellow erupted from the moss-hung shrubs on the left side of the trail, flew toward a clump of
stunted lehua makanoe trees twenty meters away, and disappeared.
The old man choked back a penitent groan. Quel bondieu d'imb├йcileтАФhe'd frightened it with
some inadvertent telepathic gaucherie! And now it was gone, and his feeble metapsychic seekersense