"Lisanne Norman - Sholan 01 - Turning Point" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman Lisanne)

Turning Point
Lisanne Norman
Copyright ┬й 1993 by Lisanne Norman.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Romas Kukalis.
Interior map by Michael Gilbert.
DAW Book Collectors No. 936.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and
destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has re-ceived any payment for this "stripped book."
First Printing, December 1993 7 8 9
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
тАФтАФMARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

For Mum and Dad, who taught me to love words and paint pictures.

For the members of ASTRA, too numerous to mention, but still appreciated.

For the many friends who pushed and sup-ported me into finishing this, including An-drew Stephenson,
Ken Slater, Anne Page, and Marsha Jones.

Thank you all.

Prelude

Carrie slept lightly, on the edge of wakefulness as always when Elise was working at Geshader, the Alien
Pleasure City. Despite the sleeping pill and her sister's mental block, vague images from Elise drifted
through her sleeping mind, interweaving themselves with her dreams.

Once more dwarfed by the size of her parents, she tossed and turned in a sweat-soaked bed, moaning in
agony as they and the doctor probed and pressed the livid bruises on her back and arm, looking for a
more serious injury that didn't existтАж for her. Then they thought to check her twin.

They found Elise sitting placidly with her right arm at an impossible angle and blood from the lacerations
on her back slowly seeping through her clothes into the sofa. She had been the one who had fallen out of
a tree.

Carrie had hardly felt the sting of the hypodermic amidst the fire in her back and arm.

"It's the damnedest thing. Her sister has no sense of pain," she'd heard the doctor's voice boom as she
began to slip into unconsciousness.

"It hurts," she whimpered, stirring fretfully in her bed.

Monsters lurked in the fever dream, lizards of gray-green on two legs, lumbering slowly after her with a
ponderous determination as, utterly terrified, she fled down echoing corridors.

"Stop!" The voice was low and sibilant, the English dis-torted by a tongue not made to form the words.