"Julian May - The Intervention" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

"Damn right! Least you can do is satisfy my curiosity, settle my mind before you start
in all over again with the botheration. Put on an astral body like your damn Lylmik compшres.
Show yourself!"
No.
Rogi gave a derisive sniff. He took a bandanna handkerchief from his pocket and
mopped his nose. "It figures. You're not a real Lylmik anymore than you're a real ghost. "
Wind-chill tears blurred the purple and orange comets that chased each other overhead like
she-elves with their hair on fire.
The Ghost said: I am a Lylmik. I am the entity charged with the guidance of the Family
Remillard through your agency, just as I've always claimed to be. And now I come to you
with one last task -
"Shit - I knew it!" Rogi howled in mortal anguish. Three stunning detonations from
aerial bombs announced a flock of golden pinwheels. They zoomed heavenward in a tight
formation, fissioned into hundreds of small replicas of themselves, then rained down toward
the skeletal treetops, whirling and whistling like demented birds. There were vocal and
telepathic cheers from the crowd. The brass band in front of the inn played louder.
Metapsychic operants among the students were mind-shouting the final verse of the old
college song with drunken exuberance:

Eleazar and the Big Chief harangued and gesticulated.
And they founded Dartmouth College, and the Big Chief matriculated.
Eleazar was the fa-cul-tee, and the whole curriculum
Was five hundred gallons of New England rum!

"All my life, " Rogi moaned, "haunted by a damn exotic busybody masquerading as the
Family Ghost. Why me? Just a quiet man, not very clever, hardly any metabilities worth
mentioning. No world-shaker, just a harmless bookseller. Most insignificant member of the
high and mighty Remillard Dynasty. Why me? Persecuted! Pushed around without any
common consideration. Forced into one dangerous situation after another just to carry out
your damn Lylmik schemes and forward the manifest destiny of humanity... unless it all
hatched in my own unconscious. "
Like starry dandelion puffs, colossal pompoms of Dartmouth green and white exploded
high over the Old Row. The wind strengthened, stirring more and more snow into the air.
Patiently, the Ghost said: You and your family were the key that opened the Galactic
Milieu to the human race. The work required an exotic mentor because of the psychosocial
immaturity of Earth's people and the pivotal role of you Remillards. And while I admit that
you were called upon to endure mental and physical hardship -
"You should be ashamed, using me that way. Playing goddam God. " Rogi gave a
maudlin snuffle. He had the flask out again and emptied it with a single pull. "Nobody ever
knew I was the one - your catspaw. Always another pot you wanted stirred, another piece of
manipulation, meddling with this Remillard or that one. Uncle Rogi, galactic agent
provocateur! And you used every dirty trick in the book to keep me in line, tu bтton
merdeux."
The Ghost said: Your family would have been aware if we had tried to coerce them,
and they never would have accepted direct counsel from nonhumans - especially in the pre-
Intervention years. We had to work through you. You were the perfect solution. And you sur-
vived.
A cascade of white fire poured from the sky behind the library, silhouetting its lovely
Georgian Revival tower. Psychokinetic adepts among the spectators took hold of the falling
sparks and formed them into Greek letters and other emblems of college fellowship. The