"Vonda N. McIntyre - Little Faces" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

"You confessed to me. You confessed the death of Zorargul, as if it were your fault. Do you believe
Seyyan, that you deceived her? Are you outraged enough to accuse her, instead of yourself?"
Yalnis sat quite still, considering. After a long while, she patted Zorar's hand again, collected herself, and
brushed her fingertips across Zorar's companion's hair with sympathy. She kissed Zorar quickly and
returned to her own ship.




┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖



Preparations, messages of welcome to old acquaintances, greetings to new ones, occupied her. Zorar's
question always hovered in the back of her mind, and sometimes pushed itself forward to claim her
attention:

What do you think, now?

While she prepared, the ships moved closer, extruded connections, grew together. Yalnis's ship became
the center, till the colony obscured her wide vistas of space and clouds of stars and glowing dust. She felt
her ship's discomfort at being so constricted; she shared it. She felt her ship's exhilaration at intense
genetic exchange: those sensations, she avoided.

She continued to ignore Seyyan, but never rescinded her invitation. Yalnis's ship allowed no direct
connection to Seyyan's glittering craft. Seyyan remained on the outskirts of the colony, forming her own
connections with others. The ships floated in an intricately delicate dance of balance and reciprocity. As
the people exchanged greetings, reminiscences, gifts, the ships exchanged information and new genetic
code.

Most of their communications were cryptic. Oftentimes even the ships had no idea what the new
information would do, but they collected and exchanged it promiscuously, played with it, rearranged it,
tested it. The shimmery pattern of rainbow reflections spread from Seyyan's craft's skin to another, and
another, and the pattern mutated from solid to stripes to spots.

Yalnis's ship remained its customary reflective silver.

"The ships have chosen a new fashion," Yalnis said.

"True," her ship said. Then, "False."

Yalnis frowned, confused, as her ship displayed a genetic sequence and its genealogy tag. Yalnis left all
those matters to the ship, so she took a moment to understand that her ship rejected the pattern because
it descended from Seyyan's craft. Her ship led her further into its concerns, showing how many new
sequences it had considered but rejected and stopped taking in when it encountered Seyyan's tag.

"Thank you," Yalnis said.

"True."