"Ian McDonald - Verthandi's Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

this small grassy sphere was big enough to contain tens of thousands of Pelerines
and stylites, coenobites and saddhus, adrift in the ocean of grass.

тАЬIтАЩm sure weтАЩve been this way before,тАЭ Scented Coolabar said. They were in
the third monad of their quest. Eighty days ago, Harvest Moon had discovered
beyond the pain of exercise the joy of muscles, even on this low-grav prairie, and
could now be found at every unassigned moment delightedly studying her own matte
black curves.

тАЬI think thatтАЩs the idea.тАЭ

тАЬBloody Rose of Jericho,тАЭ Scented Coolabar grumbled. They loped, three
meters at a loose-limbed step, toward a dendro-eremite, a lone small tree in the
wave-swept grass, bare branches upheld like prayers. тАЬEven on the ship she was a
damn ornery creature. Typical bloody selfish.тАЭ

Because when Rose of Jericho went missing after the routine postsortie
debrief, something else had gone missing with her. VerthandiтАЩs Ring, a name, a
galactic coordinate; the vector upon which the Enemy migration had been
accelerating, decade upon decade. In the enforced communality of the return
flightтАФpload personalities intersecting and mergingтАФCap-tain and Engineer alike
had understood that their Mistress at Arms had deduced more than just a destination
from the glowing ashes of the annihi-lated fleet. Soul etiquette forbade
nonconsensual infringements of privacy and Rose of Jericho had used that social
hiatus to conceal her speculations. Jealous monotheistic divinities were not so
zealous as Clade debriefings, yet the Gentle Inquisitors of the Chamber of
Ever-Renewing Waters had swept around that hidden place like sea around a reef. A
vector, and a name, confirmation of the message they had received three hundred
years before: VerthandiтАЩs Ring.

Even before they saw the face framed in the vulva of living wood, Har-vest
Moon and Scented Coolabar knew that their small quest was ended. When they first
met on the virtual desert of Sofreendi for the Chamber of Ever-Renewing WatersтАЩ
mission briefing (as dense and soul-piercing as its debrief), a closeness, a simpatico,
suggested that they might once have been the same person; ploads copied and
recopied and edited with mash-ups of other personalities. Empathy endures, across
parsecs and plain, battlefronts and secrets.

тАЬDoes that hurt?тАЭ Scented Coolabar said. Greenwood crept down Rose of
JerichoтАЩs brow, across her cheeks and chin, slow and certain as seasons.

тАЬHurt? Why should it hurt?тАЭ Wind soughed in Rose of JerichoтАЩs twigs.
Harvest Moon, bored with this small world of grass, surreptitiously ran her hands
down her muscled thighs.

тАЬI donтАЩt know, it just looks, well, uncomfortable.тАЭ

тАЬNo, itтАЩs very very satisfying,тАЭ Rose of Jericho said. Her face was now a
pinched oval of greening flesh. тАЬRooted. Slow.тАЭ She closed her eyes in
contemplation.