"03.Time Streams" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGough Scott)

stale air within. The space was dark and cramped. With each
wave surge, the floor clattered with junk-a map tube, a
lodestone, a stylus, a wrecked lantern, spanners, a slide
rule, and other indistinguishable items. To one side of the
cabin, a small table hugged the wall. To the other were a
pair of bunks. The bottom bed held a still figure.
Dead, Jhoira thought. The man lay motionless, despite
the tossing sea. His face was tanned beneath curls of golden
hair. His jaw was shaggy with a week's growth of beard. His
hands, large and strong, were laid across his chest in the
attitude of death.
Jhoira backed away. Perhaps this was a plague ship, this
man the last to succumb, with no one to throw him overboard.
She'd been a fool to climb aboard.
Then he moved. He breathed, and she knew, even if he was
plagued, she could not abandon him. Without another moment's
hesitation, Jhoira crossed the crowded cabin, stooped beside
the bunk, and lifted the man. She had always been strong.
The Ghitu of Shiv had to be strong. Shifting the man to her
shoulder, she struggled out of the cabin and up the stairs.
Navigating the rubble-strewn deck with a man on her shoulder
was difficult, and Jhoira stumbled twice. Gritting her teeth
in determination, she made the rail. With a heart-rending
leap, she reached the rock and clung there.
As if shifted by her jump, the broken craft heeled away
from the crag. A wave crashed into it, lifting it up, and
with a briny surge, the boat scraped up toward Jhoira and
her charge. She clambered to a higher spot on the rock. The
wave tumbled back from shore, taking the hulk with it. The
mast rolled under and snapped like a twig. Shroudlike, the
sail wrapped the splintered boat as it heaved outward on the
retreating wave. Broken barrels and other debris boiled in
the wake of the boat.
Panting, Jhoira watched the broken mass of wreckage bob
out into deeper water. The next wave rolled it once more,
and then the ship disappeared. For some time she could see
it, moving in the undertow like some white leviathan.
Jhoira waited for a break in the waves and climbed down
from the stone. She crossed the sandy berm, tempted to set
the man down there. A darting glance up at the hilltop told
her that no other students or scholars had seen the
shipwreck or knew of the man, but others might come soon.
The man would be as good as dead. Malzra did not suffer the
arrival of strangers on his island paradise, and the
students were sworn to report any such castaways they
discovered. Jhoira planned to report this one, of course,
but she didn't want anyone else to know about him-not yet.
Strong though she was, the climb from the shore to her
hideaway was a hot labor. When she arrived, she laid the man
down on the sunny stretch of sandstone where she had spent