"Julian May - The Pliocene Exiles 04 - The Adversary" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

heavily forested Vosges Mountains rather than risking a long
lake voyage to the Jura. A lone course was taken by the survi-
ving Japanese, Yoshimitsu, who headed north hoping to reach
the sea.

Claude, Richard, Amerie, and Felice fled deep into the
Vosges. Eventually they were contacted by a ragtag group of
free outlaw humans, fugitives from Tanu settlements, who called
themselves Lowlives. The Lowlife leader was none other than
Madame Angelique Guderian, former keeper of the time-gate
and the ultimate author of Pliocene humanity's degradation.
She wore a golden torc, the gift of the Firvulag, who had formed
a shaky alliance with the Lowlives against their mortal foe, the
Tanu.

A great manhunt had been mounted by the Tanu after the
prisoner revolt. Basil Wimborne and most of his contingent were
recaptured and sent to Finiah. Its city-lord, Velteyn, led a Flying
Hunt himself over the Vosges in search of the other escapees;
but they were safe with Madame and her Lowlives, listening
incredulously to the old woman's scheme for freeing humanity
from the Tanu yoke, which would utilize the rather reluctant
cooperation of the exotic Firvulag.

Hundreds of kilometres east of the Rhine River lay the so-
called Ship's Grave. There the titanic space-going organism who
had carried both Tanu and Firvulag from the Duat Galaxy to
our own had plunged to Earth, creating a huge crater. Tanu
and Firvulag passengers in the Ship, led by its spouse, a woman
named Brede, had escaped from the dying organism in small
flying machines before it impacted. Later the two groups of
exotics had left the flyers parked around the rim of the crater
after their two greatest heroes, Shining Lugonn of the Tanu and
Sharn the Atrocious of the Firvulag, fought a ritual battle in
honour of the defunct Ship. Ceremoniously entombed within
one of the flyers--which were presumed to be still at the crater
after a thousand years--was the body of Lugonn, together with
his laserlike weapon, the Spear.

Madame proposed to lead an expedition of Lowlives to the
Ship's Grave crater and retrieve this Spear for use against the
very Tanu who held it sacred. And if the flyers were still opera-
tional, as seemed likely, the expedition would attempt to bring
one back to participate in a joint Lowlife-Firvulag attack on
Finiah, a Tanu stronghold.

After many vicissitudes, this first phase of Madame Guder-
ian's great plan for the liberation of Pliocene humanity was
successful. The Tanu were forced to abandon Finiah, thus losing
their only barium mine, which had produced an element vital