"Paul McAuley - The Book of Confluence 01 - Child of the River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

turn, seemed to stretch like a cat, and then it was alongside
the skiff, pressed right against it without even a bump.
Suddenly, the Constable and his sons were inside the cloud
of machines. It was as if they had fallen headfirst into a
nebula, for there were hundreds of them, each burning with
ferocious white light, none bigger than a rhinoceros beetle.
Urthank tried to swat one that hung in front of his snout, and
cursed when it stung him with a flare of red light and a




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crisp sizzle.
"Steady, " the Constable said, and someone else said
hoarsely, "Flee."
Astonished, the Constable turned from his inspection of
the glimmering boat.
"Flee, " the second trader said again. "Flee, you fools!"
Both of the Constable's sons had shipped their oars and
were looking at their father. They were waiting for his lead.
The Constable put away his spectacles and shoved the butt
end of his whip in his belt. He could not show that he was
afraid. He reached through the whirling lights of the machines
and touched the white boat.
I Its bull was as light and close woven as feathers, and at
the Constable's touch, the incurved sides peeled back with a
sticky, crackling sound. As a boy, the Constable had been
given to wandering the wild shore downriver of Aeolis, and
he had once come across a blood orchid growing in the cloven
root of a kapok tree. The orchid had made precisely the
same noise when, sensing his body heat, it had spread its
fleshy lobes wide to reveal the lubricious curves of its creamy
pistil. He had fled in terror before the blood orchid's perfume
could overwhelm him, and the ghost of that fear stayed his
hand now.
The bull vibrated under his fingertips with a quick, eager
pulse. Light poured out from the boat's interior, rich and
golden and filled with floating motes. A body made a shadow
inside this light, and the Constable thought at once that the
boat was no more than a coffin set adrift on the river's current
. The coffin of some lord or lady no doubt, but in function




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