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

ship, leaving bare walls and floor, and the cold stars above. "You didn't even ask me," Yalnis said softly.

"You led me to believe we understood each other. But you're so youngтАФ" Seyyan reached toward her.
Yalnis drew back, and Seyyan let her hand fall with a sigh. "So young. So na├пve." She caught up her
purple cloak from the floor and strode past Yalnis. Though the circular chamber left plenty of room, she
brushed past close to Yalnis, touching her at shoulder and hip, bare skin to bare skin. A lock of her hair
swept across Yalnis's belly, stroking low like a living hand, painting a bloody streak.

Seyyan entered the pilus that connected Yalnis's ship with her own craft. As soon as Seyyan crossed the
border, Yalnis's ship disconnected and closed and healed the connection.

Yalnis's ship emitted a few handsful of plasma in an intemperate blast, moving itself to a safer distance.
Seyyan's craft gleamed and glittered against the starfield, growing smaller as Yalnis's ship moved away,
coruscating with a pattern of prismatic color.

Yalnis sank to the floor again, humiliated and grief-stricken. Without her request or thought, her ship
cushioned her from its cold living bones, growing a soft surface beneath her, dimming the light to dusk.
Dusk, not the dawn she had planned.

She gazed down at Zorargul's small body. Its blood pooled in her palm. She drew her other hand from
the seeping wound where Zorargul had lived and cradled the shriveling tendril of the companion's penis.
A deep ache, throbbing regularly into pain, replaced the potential for pleasure as her body knit the
wound of Zorargul's passing. Behind the wound, a sore, soft mass remained.

"Zorargul," she whispered, "you gave me such pleasure."

Of her companions, Zorargul had most closely patterned the lovemaking of its originator. Her pleasure
always mingled with a glow of pride, that Zorar thought enough of her to offer her a companion.

Yalnis wondered where Zorar was, and if she would come to Yalnis's daughter's launching. They had not
communicated since they parted. Zorar anticipated other adventures, and her ship yearned for deep
space. She might be anywhere, one star system away, or a dozen, or setting out to another cluster,
voyaging through vacuum so intense and a region so dark she must conserve every molecule of mass and
every photon of energy, using none to power a message of acceptance, or regret, or goodwill.

Yalnis remained within parallax view of her own birthplace. She had grown up in a dense population of
stars and people. She had taken a dozen lovers in her life, and accepted five companions: Zorargul,
Vasigul, Asilgul, Hayaligul, and Bahadirgul. With five companions, she felt mature enough, wealthy
enough, to launch a daughter with a decent, even lavish, settlement. After that, she could grant her ship's
needтАФand her own desireтАФto set out on adventures and explorations.

Zorar, she thoughtтАФ

She reached for Zorar's memories and reeled into loss and emptiness. The memories ended with
Zorargul's murder. Zorar, much older than Yalnis, had given her the gift of her own long life of journeys
and observations. They brought her the birth of stars and worlds, the energy storm of a boomerang loop
around a black hole, skirting the engulfing doom of its event horizon. They brought her the most
dangerous adventure of all, a descent through the thick atmosphere of a planet to its living surface.

All Yalnis had left were her memories of the memories, dissolving shadows of the gift. All the memories