"Julian May - The Golden Torc" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

anthropologist in search of his lover, Mercy Lamballe, who
had preceded him through the gate two months before; Eliza-beth
Orme, a Grand Master metapsychic operator deprived of
her stupendous mental powers by a brain trauma; Stein Oleson,
a misfit planet-crust driller, who dreamt of leading a Viking's
life in a simpler world; and Aiken Drum, an engaging young crook who, like Felice, possessed
latent metapsychic powers.
These eight people successfully made the jump six million
years into Earth's pastтАФonly to discover, as other time-trav-
elers had before them, that Pliocene Europe was under the
control of a group of maverick humanoids from another galaxy.
The exotics were also exiled, driven from their home because
of their barbarous battle-religion. The dominant exotic faction, the Tanu, were tall and hand-


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some. In spite of a thousand-year sojourn, there were still less
than 20,000 of them on Earth because their reproduction was
inhibited by solar radiation. Since their plasm was compatible
with that of humanity, they had for nearly seventy years utilized
the time-travelers in breeding, holding Pliocene humanity in
benevolent serfdom. Antagonistic to the Tanu and outnumbering them by at least.four to one were
their ancient foes, the Firvulag. These exotics
were mostly of short stature and reproduced quite well on Earth.
Tanu and Firvulag actually constitute a dimorphic raceтАФthe
tall ones metapsychically latent, the short ones possessed of
limited operant metafunctions. The Tanu wear mind-amplifiers,
collars called golden tores, to bring their powers up to operancy.
Firvulag do not require tores, and most of them are weaker in
mental power than the Tanu.
For most of the thousand years that Tanu and Firvulag re-sided
on Pliocene Earth (which they called the Many-Colored
Land), they were fairly evenly matched in the ritual wars fought
as part of their battle-religion. The greater finesse and more
sophisticated technology of the Tanu tended to counterbalance
the superior numbers of the cruder Firvulag. But the advent of
time-traveling humanity tipped the scales in favor of the tall
exotics. Not only did Tanu-human hybrids turn out to have
unusual physical and mental strength, but humans also en-hanced
the rather decadent science establishment of the Tanu
by injecting the expertise of the Galactic Milieu. The seventy
years of time-traveling had seen nearly 100,000 humans trans-ported
to Pliocene Europe; their assimilation gave the Tanu
almost complete ascendency over the Firvulag foe (who never
mated with humanity and generally despised them).
The lot of humankind under the Tanu overlords is by no
means grim; people who cooperate are treated very well. All
rough work is done by ramapithecines, small apes who wear