"Daniel Keys Moran - The Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

Spring wears away.
 "Forget I even mentioned Eden, forget I even brought up the concept of Paradise,
will that make you happy? Does it matter that the Creator T'Pau was a devout
Christian? In the wisdom of your five years you have struck upon the answer:
probably not."
Their shadows mingled with the shadows of the forest. The twelve children,
following the tall adult down the path among the overarching trees, hurried. They
were normal children; in their childhood they were all that was left of the childhood
of the human race. With the advent of adulthood they would take on powers and
duties the likes of which no human of an earlier day could have envisioned, would
metamorphose in a change more striking and no less fundamental than that of a
butterfly from a caterpillar.
But that would be later; they were, for now, only children.
Dressed all in green and black, the curled red hair flowing down across his
shoulders, the adult did not pause for them. His steps were even and measured, as
though he might walk straight around the world without slowing if the fancy took
him.
Despite the shortness of their breath, the children threw questions at him with the
zeal of inquisitors. At first his manner had intimidated them, but only for a short
time. For most of them this was their first time visiting Earth; for most of them it
would also be their last. Some of their questions the adult answered, and told them
of bears and why bears were carnivores, of the Ice Times and the Floods which had
followed the first and largest of the Fire Wars, and of the Dolphins and the treaty
that had given them the water-covered planet so strangely misnamed Earth. Some
questions he ignored, and so they did not learn of the laser weapons that protected
most of the Valley, nor of the genegineered red silkies and shriken which were
produced during the later stages of the Fire Wars.
In response to one question he said, "You should have gone before we left."
They came at length to a vast field, kilometers across, a clearing where no trees
grew, and no flowers. Wild grass filled it across its length, green and brown beneath
the bright sun. The river called the Killing Creek, flowing down to join the great river
Almandar, bordered it on one side, and the forest on the other. Standing at the edge
of the trees, they could see, if they looked south and east into the rising foothills of
the Black Mountains, the distant, glowing crystal spires of the city of Parliament.
The adult did not look toward Parliament. His gaze roved out across the empty
field. "It happened here," he said, so quietly that the children must strain to hear him.
"Solan fell here, and our hopes for peaceтАж"
He stood so, silently, lost in memory, until the children behind him began to stir,
and one, a girl of some eight years, with more bravery or less sense than the others,
said, "Loga? May we see Parliament?"
The man said nothing. A brilliant band of light gathered itself in around them,
momentarily outshining the sun itself.
They were gone.
 They appeared in the Hall of Mirrors.
Their images bounced away from them, hundreds of tall, blue-eyed Logas,
thousands upon thousands of children. It was a choice Loga had made for effect; as
a result he waited patiently as the children exclaimed in wonder at their surroundings,
and tried to walk through the mirrors to see what was on the other side. At length,
without word, he turned away from them and strode off down the length of the Hall.
The children made haste behind him, before the real Loga vanished into his