"Andre Norton - Dread Companion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

found an uneasy stirring within me. It was as if, now that the door stood


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open, I was far more conscious of the safety of the room it guarded.

"Well done!" He brought my chair around to face him again. "But remember,
Kilda, I only provide the means for your first steps; the march beyond is
up to you. This much will I do for you. I shall appoint you one of my
off-world reporters. You shall keep your skill sharp by taping for me
anything that you think may add to this library."

I felt some easing of that tension within me. Now a spark of excitement lit
in my mind. There was probably little enough I could add to the great
wealth of material from a thousand - a hundred thousand - worlds that Lazk
Volk stored. But were even a few sentences of mine thought fit to be
included, I would be honored indeed.

"So it is decided." He spoke briskly. "The rest you will leave to me. Now -
1 want a run-through of the Ruh-karv report in comparison with the tridees
from Xcothal."

I busied myself in producing the two tapes of archaeological mysteries for
his viewing. With one thing and another, three days went by filled with
work. In fact, I was so busy tracing down buried facts - which had not been
called for for years - that on the third night, as I returned to my room to
kick off my toe slippers with a sigh, I had the suspicion that Lazk Volk
was keeping me running from one end of the archives to the other for some
purpose of his own.

On the fourth morning when I reported for work, I found him not barricaded
by rows of tape containers, but sipping a cup of caff and staring at his
projection screen as if it bore lines of formulae. He looked at me sharply
as I came in and "then used his lower right hand to indicate a box of, some
size and on the comer of his desk.

"Take that and put on its contents. You have an interview at the tenth hour
with Gentlefem Guska Zobak. She is staying at the Double Star."

"Put what on-"

"Clothing - proper clothing, girl! You go out in the city in that" - he
nodded to my creche dress, a one-piece garment planned for service and for
neither fit nor show - "and you will be the center of attention, which, I
assume, you would not care for."

To that I agreed and took the box into the storeroom beyond. But I was a
little surprised at the contents. I did have one utilitarian robe, which I