"Continuing Time - 98 - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

being noticed. He was not considering leaving his position anyway; but again in
the late afternoon he saw motion in the forest. Further away this time; about
seven hundred meters upstream of his position. That was all he saw, motion; it
might, this time, have been some wild creature.

The hunger was not bad; but by the end of his third day on the bluff TyrelТs
thirst gnawed at him. He could smell water and see it, but he could not go get
it. Even as greatly as he had slowed himself, some systems were beyond his
control. His body fought to retain its fluids, but toxins built up regardless;
before dawn of the fourth day Tyrel pushed his metabolism back up, and crept
slowly back under the cover of the trees, letting his skin fade to black as he
did so. He stood close to a tree and urinated against the bark, slowly and
quietly, until his bladder was empty, and then made his way back out to his
chosen spot before the sun had risen.
Tyrel knew himself well, and the systems of which he was composed, both those he
could control and those he could not; despite his thirst his systolic fluid
levels were acceptable. He was two or three days away yet from being unable to
fight. He pushed back the first traces of real fear, and waited through the long
fourth day on the rock.

The fifth and sixth days came and went and Tyrel found himself growing
lightheaded and dizzy. His elbows throbbed where they rested against the stone,
and his ribs, and the bones in his hips. At times he found himself coming back
to awareness, knowing that time had passed but not knowing how much. Sol tracked
slowly across the sky; Tyrel had time to appreciate the long line of
genegineers, human and MI, whose work had left him resistant to sunburn.
Fog crawled in before dawn on the seventh day, white and misty. Luna hung
overhead, nearly full, illuminating the banked wreaths of fog with an ethereal
glow. TyrelТs skin grew damp; trickles of moisture ran down across the broad
muscles in his back, joined together and pooled like sweat in the small of his
back and the backs of his knees. The rock beneath him became slick. He imagined
he saw shapes in the moonlit fog, found his finger tightening on the trigger of
his rifle, and forced himself to relax. Tired as he was he found his skin
tingling as though an electric current danced upon its surface. An absurd
lightness touched him, as though he might at any moment float weightless off the
surface of the rock, up into the cool night air. He could not feel the rifle in
his hands, or the stone he lay upon, or himself.
Еher eyes were as green as his own. He did not know her name, and had never met
her before in his life; but he knew that he looked upon a lord of the House of
November, a telepath like himself.
She sat on a roof, with two men, in the last light of day. Tyrel did not know
the name of the city that surrounded them, stretching away in one direction as
far as the eye could see; in another direction was a great ocean. She seemed
young, Tyrel thought perhaps fifteen or sixteen; wearing a pair of white shorts
and a thin white blouse, tinged orange by the setting sun.
The men with her were not much older, by appearance eighteen or twenty. Both
were fit, one blond and the other dark; but Tyrel did not much notice them, for
the girl was speaking; had been speaking.
УЕitТs why God put us here. To make things better, so that the people who come
after us have a better life than the people who came before.Ф The girl sat up