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

was incapable of locating its faint life-aura in broad daylight. Everything now depended upon the
camera.
Taking care to project only the most soothing and amiable vibes, he hastily stowed away the
Sonagram machine, uncased a digital image recorder with a thermal targeter attached, and began
anxiously scanning the trees. Wisps of vapor streamed up, drawn by the tropical sun. The sweet
anise scent of mokihana berries mingled with that of rotting vegetation. The Alakai Swamp of Kauai
in the Hawaiian Islands was an eerie place, the wettest spot on Earth, a plateau over 1200 meters
high where the annual rainfall often exceeded 15 meters. The swamp was also home to some of
Earth's rarest birds, and it attracted hardy human students of avifauna from all over the Galactic
Milieu.
The old man, whose name was Rogatien Remillard, knew the island well, having first come to it
back in 2052, when his great-grandnephew Jack, whom he called Ti-Jean, was newborn with a body
that seemed perfectly normal. Jack's mother Teresa, rest her poor soul, had needed a sunny place
to recuperate after hiding out in the snowbound Megapod Reserve of British Columbia, and the


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island afforded a perfect refuge for the three of them.
Rogi had returned to Kauai many times since then, most recently four days earlier, for
reasons that had seemed compelling at the time.
Well, perhaps he'd imbibed just a tad too much Wild Turkey as he celebrated the completion of
another section of his memoirs ...
Crafty in his cups, he had decided to get out of town before his Lylmik nemesis could catch
up with him and force him to continue the work. He'd done a damned good job so far, if he did say
so himselfтАФand he might as well, since only God knew when any other natural human being would ever
get to read what he'd written.
Even though he was drunk as a skunk, Rogi had wit enough to toss a few clothes and things
into his egg, climb in, and program the navigator for automatic Vee-route flight from New
Hampshire to Kauai. Then he had passed out. When he awoke he found his aircraft in a holding
pattern above the island. He was hungover but lucid, with no idea why his unconscious mind had
chosen this particular destination. But not to worry! His old hobby of ornithology, neglected for
more than a decade, kicked in with a brilliant notion. He could backpack into the Alakai Swamp,
where he might possibly see and photograph the single remaining indigenous Hawaiian bird species
he had never set eyes upon. He landed the rhocraft at Koke'e Lodge, rented the necessary
equipment, and set out.
And now, had he found the friggerty critter only to lose it through gross stupidity? Had he
scared it off into the trackless wilderness of the swamp, where he didn't dare follow for fear of
getting lost? He was a piss-poor metapsychic operant at best, totally lacking in the ultrasensory
pathfinding skills of the more powerful heads, and the Alakai was a remote and lonely place. It
would be humiliating to get trapped armpit-deep in some muck-hole and have to call the lodge to
send in a rescuer. Still, if he was careful to go only a few steps off the trail, he might still
snag the prize.
He skirted a pool bordered with brown, white, and orange lichens, then peered through the
camera eyepiece from a fresh vantage point. The luminous bull's-eye of the thermal detector shone
wanly green in futility. Despair began to cloud his previous mood of elation. The very last bird
on his Hawaiian Audubon Checklist, forfeit because he'd failed to control his doddering
mindpowersтАФ
No! Dieu du ciel, there it was! He'd moved just enough so that the infrared targeter, preset