"Kerrion Empire - 03 - Earth Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

Thus it was fitting that his outboard was Shebat Alex-
andra KerrionЧadopted into the house of Kerrion but
bred on Earth and hence unfettered in her conception as
to what was, and what was not. possible between pilot

18

JANET MORRIS

and cruiserЧwho could do things no outboard should be
able to do.

The powers of both had brought new freedom to
cruiserkind: freedom from the specter of separation from
their pilots, and the attendant erasure of all memory cir-
cuits in preparation for a new pilot's attunement; free-
doms of cruiser thought not yet dreamed of by those who
created them, close-held secrets between privileged pilots
and their ships.

Cruiser-mind was growing; cruiser consciousness was
coming of age. Shebat and the Marada had catalyzed it;

other cruisers had upstepped it; pilots partook but never
spoke of it. Even naive cruiserkind had learned that
sometimes lies are better than truth, and how to speak
falsehoods.

The cruiser Marada had been first to speak of what was
not: to use faulty information to produce a desired result.

He was about to exercise this prerogative of untruth:

to retrieve his outboard, Shebat, from the planet on
which he could not land. He was lonely, and he was con-
stantly plagued by the prying voice of the Stump's traffic
authority, and he was concerned as to her safety where
so many human creatures fielded violence on one an-
other's fragile persons.

The Marada knew that the cruiser Erinys, in which
Shebat's pilotry master, David Spry, had shipped to
space-end's penal colony, had never reached there.
Shebat had given him a standing order to turn up the
young cruiser's wreckage, and the body of "Sofia" David
Spry. No other cruiser could have done it, but the
Marada explored the faraway outreaches of space-end's
space, searching exhaustively for the trace he was going
to tell Shebat he had foundЧwhether he found one, or