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

"Those folk out there are your enemies. They are not
cute or quaint, or harmless. Herr Thorne is a dangerous
man."

"You think I do not know them? Remember, I was
born one of them. As for Thome, only passions are dan-
gerous, never those afflicted by them. Maybe he is dan-
gerous, impassioned. Maybe not so, any longer. Now go
sit down and strap in and be quiet, or walk the air up to
the Stump. When I was an ignorant girl in Bolen's town,
I'knew well that enchanters could walk through the air. It
would save me trouble, should you do so: ferrying you to
the Stump was no part of my itinerary. . . . What are you
grinning at, Tempest?"

The intelligencer, not sobering, sank down in a jump
seat. "Telemetry," he sighed, arms spread wide. "Visual
displays. Submasters. Microwave ovens! I don't think
I've felt this good since your stepfather made an intel-
ligencer cadet out of me, and I didn't have to do anyone
else's laundry anymore."

"Well, I am glad someone is happy," glowered Shebat,

23

EARTH DREAMS

sitting to her helm. "1 hope you will be happy doing
Chaeron's laundryЧfor when I leave this space, I will
have no passenger aboard!"

Behind her back, the Kerrion intelligencer just come
from Draconis and the Orrefors-turned-Kemon cultural
attache named Hooker exchanged glances. Hooker's
said: I am only half Kerrion, and these tantrum-throwing
children of power are incomprehensible and despicable
to me. Tempest replied: I bid you be patient, but watch
closely, and learn. They are as they are, and you had best
adjust to them, for they shall never even think to accom-
modate you. But inwardly, Tempest was seething. He
had long known that Shebat was unpredictable. Women
seldom became pilots: her inherent unpredictability, up-
stepped by pilot's syndrome when focused through
woman's more circuitous reasoning, was going to be his
greatest problem, he presumed to think. If he had dared,
he would have asked the cruiser what her trouble was.

But this would not have availed him. The Marada was
not capable of even surety that Shebat had a problem: he