"18 - The End of the Circle" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

"Only some of it, Scott. I remember when we were all inside the central chamber together. With Sera and Corg and the Queen-Mother."
"What made the horde-er, the Queen-Mother leave, Marlene? I mean, I'm sure she realized the fleet had plans to irradiate the area, but it seemed like she'd decided to leave before the neutron missiles were launched."
Marlene nodded and reached across the table for a water bottle. "It's true, Scott. And something vital left me when she departed." She took a long pull from the bottle. "I know you sensed it when you held me. I feel as though I'm only half-here, as though if I breathe too deeply I'll fade from sight. But I have a knowledge of things, Scott, a knowledge: that seems undreamed of by any race."
"Don't worry," Lunk said, "I'm not about to let you fade. Marlene squeezed his hand. "You see, Scott, the QueenнMother finally understood, the reasons for all that had happened on Optera, Tirol, and Earth, and that knowledge liberated her."
"But what was it she understood?" Scott asked.
Marlene quivered. "I can't tell you, Scott."
"Please, Marlene," Scott snapped.
Lunk stepped out from behind the chair. "I'm warning you, Lieutenant."
Marlene put a hand on his balled-up fist. "No, Lunk, Scott doesn't understand. It's not that I'm keeping something from you, Scott. I only mean that you're asking the wrong person."
"Sera," Scott said after a moment's reflection.
"Yes. She was more closely bound to the Regis than I was. But I fear that bond has affected her more than it has me."
"Do you know where she is?"
Marlene closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. "I can sense where she is. Sometimes I can almost see through her eyes and feel her suffering."
Scott edged closer to her. "Where, Marlene?"
"The city of tall towers in the Northlands. The one Sera and Corg were to rule."
Scott and Lunk exchanged looks and simultaneously said: "Mannatan."
"Yes. She is with Lancer."
Scott was already on his feet. "Will you come with me, Marlene? You, too, Lunk," he was quick to add. "Just until we locate her."
"Forget it, Lieutenant," Lunk said. "Marlene's not going anywhere. "
Marlene stood up and gently swung Lunk around to face her. "But I am, Lunk. Don't you see that I have to go?" Lunk's face fell. "No, Marlene, no. You can just stay here and let me take care of you. You said yourself you were all right. I could just-"
"No, Lunk, it's no good this way," she cut him off. "Remember who and what I am."
Lunk stiffened. "You're Marlene, that's it."
Marlene shook her head. "I am Invid, Lunk." She reached up to stroke his face. "But that doesn't mean I haven't loved you."
Lunk steeled himself, holding back his anger and grief. "You'll come back to me?" he asked softly.
"Nothing can take away these past few months, Lunk."
It was Scott's turn to avert his gaze.
He swore to himself he would never love again.

With Marlene in the copilot's seat, Scott returned the jet to the REF's provisional planetside base on the Venezuelan coast and apprised Vince Grant of his plans to continue on to the Northlands. The general informed him of the successful position jump undertaken by the Ark Angel and the rapidly approaching launch window for the fold to Haydon IV. To speed Scott and Marlene on their way, Grant ordered that they be escorted to and from the Northlands city in one of the ship's few remaining reconfigurable Veritechs.
From what Scott could gather, Mannatan-recently returned to its original name of New York-was fast becoming a population center once again. The narrow island city had miraculously escaped saturation by Dolza's deathbolts, only to suffer disastrously some twenty years later at the hands of the Regis's power-mad "son," Corg. But by then the city had already fallen into the hands of street crazies `who had' somehow survived a radiation pall that had hung over the city for more than fifteen years' and roving gangs of Foragers and rough-trade Southern Cross deserters. A scarcity of food and arable land had kept the population numbers low, but now that New York had become a kind of raw-materials depot for developing towns to the south and west, a barter system for foodstuffs had been implemented.
The Veritech put down west of the Hudson River, leaving Scott and Marlene to negotiate the rest of the journey on foot, along with hundreds of other migrants who were talking or buying passage through checkpoints on the single bridge that linked city and mainland. Scott saw the end result of Corg's fiery campaign to bring the city to its knees: huge leveled tracts where tall brick and stone buildings had once stood, gridded by the scorched remains of asphalt and concrete roadways.
Marlene acted as guide, drawing on her recently enhanced psychic talents-to close on her sister simulagent's whereнabouts. In a certain sense she seemed more the Terran than Scott. But Scott refused to be fooled by the human guise the Invid Queen-Mother had fashioned for her, and so their conversations were strictly of the pragmatic sort. Scott, after all, was on a military mission.
Marlene led them ultimately to a refurbished theater in the city's midtown district, where a young Hispanic named Jorge greeted them at the door and affirmed that Lancer was in fact part of a troupe of actors, singers, and musicians.
After the less than warm reunions with Rand and Lunk, Scott was expecting more of the same from Lancer, but-the former stage gender-bender surprised him by running up the broad aisle after Jorge's announcement and embracing the two of them like family.
"Scott, I can't believe it!" Lancer said, gripping him by the arms. "God, it's great to see you again." He had equal enthusiasm for Marlene, along with a bear hug that went on for well over a minute.
Lancer looked lean and limber in tight-fitting trousers and a sleeveless shirt, but Scott noted dark circles under the singer's dyes and a somberness beneath the cheeriness of the moment. The natural color of Lancer's hair was growing in. Scott thought briefly of Yellow Dancer and wondered whether she was gone for good.
"You don't know how I need you guys right now," Lancer continued, taking hold of their hands.
"What is it, Lancer?" Marlene asked.
"Your sister," he said, favoring Marlene's hand. "I'm afraid she's dying."

Sera was bedridden in Lancer's backstage room, a tight, cluttered space that apparently served as living quarters and dressing room. A man named Simon was ministering to her, but he exited as Lancer entered, stopping only to introduce himself to Scott and Marlene in an affected, slightly effeminate manner.
Fetally curled beneath the bed's threadbare blankets, Sera seemed hardly more than a specter. "I've been waiting for you to come, Ariel," she said as Marlene kneeled beside the bed and laid a comforting hand on her heaving breast. "Sister-"
Sera pressed a finger against Marlene's lips to quiet her. "Do not weep for me, Ariel. I am to rejoin the QueenнMother. "
"Then I'll return with you, sister."
Sera shook her head. "No, Ariel, your destiny lies along a different path. And what a wonderful one it is."
Marlene leaned closer to her sister, her eyes brimming with tears. "Tell me, Sera."
"You need know only this, Ariel: that the world can be remade. The Queen-Mother learned this when she mated with the Protoculture-the goal of the Great Work, the transmutation of our race."
"The Protoculture!"
"Yes, Scott," Sera said, looking at him. "Your people will understand what to make of this."
"Stay, sister," Marlene pleaded with her. "Love has the power to keep you here."