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

rush."
The sky was completely overcast again and the tussocks of sedge and makaloa grass rippled in
the rising wind. More rain was imminent. Turning his back upon the region from which the
disembodied voice came, Rogi went squishing through the mire to retrieve his abandoned backpack.
He hauled it up, mud-splattered and dripping.
"Damn slavedriver. If you really did give a hoot about me, you'd do something about this
mess."
The pack was instantly clean, dry, and as crisp and unfaded as the day Rogi had purchased it
from the outfitting store in Hanover, New Hampshire, eighty-four years earlier. His initials newly
adorned the belt buckle, which had once been homely black plass but now appeared to have been
transmuted into solid gold.
The old man let loose a splutter of laughter. "Show-off! But thanks, anyway."
De rien, said the Ghost. Consider it a small incentive. A birthday present. Hau'oli la hanau!
Rogi frowned. "Seriously, though. My bookshop business is getting shot all to hell with me
taking so much time off for writing. And I don't mind telling you that rehashing this ancient
history is getting more and more depressing. There's a whole parcel of stuff I'd just as soon
forget. And if you had a scintilla of pride, you'd want to forget it, too."
The personage known to Rogi as the Remillard Family Ghost and to the Galactic Milieu as
Atoning Unifex, Overlord of the Lylmik, was silent for some minutes. Then It said:
The truth about the Remillards and their intimate associates must be made available to every
mind in the Galaxy. I've tried to make this clear to you from the very beginning. You're a unique
individual, Uncle Rogi. You know things the historians of the Milieu never suspected. Things that
even I have no inkling of ... such as the identity of the malignant entity called Fury.
The old man paused in adjusting his pack straps and looked over his shoulder with an
expression of blank incredulity. "You don't know who Fury was? You're not omniscient after all?"
Rogi, Rogi! How many times must I tell you that I am not
God, not even some sort of metapsychic recording angelтАФin spite of the silly nickname that
was given me! I am only a Lylmik who was once a man, six million long years ago. And I have very
little time left.
"Jesus!" Rogi's eyes widened in sudden comprehension. "You! Not me at all. You ..."
Abruptly, the rain began to fall again; but this time it was not the gentle drizzle called ua
noe that usually cloaked the Alakai Swamp but a hammering tropical deluge. Rogi stood stark still
in the midst of the downpour, transfixed by his invisible companion's words, seeming to be unaware
that he had neglected to pull up the hood of his rain jacket. Water streamed from his sodden gray
hair into his eyes.
"You," he said again. "Ah, mon fils, why didn't you tell me before, when you came to me at
the winter carnival after the long years of silence? Why did you let me rave on, resisting your
wishes, making a fool of myself?"
The mind of the Lylmik Overlord erected a transparent psychocreative umbrella over Rogi, but
tears mingled with rain continued to flow down the old man's cheeks. He reached out awkwardly to
the empty air.
The Ghost said: Keaku Cave is nearby. Let's get out of the wet.
Rogi was conscious of no movement, but he found himself suddenly within a fern-curtained
grotto, sitting on a chunk of weathered lava in front of a small, brisk fire of hapu'u stems.
Outside, a torrential storm battered the high plateau, but he was miraculously dry again. What was
more, the profound grief that had pierced him seemed to have receded and he felt embraced by a


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