"Andre Norton - Time Traders 6 - Echoes In Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

markings of a responsible adult, but they dismissed her strangeness with a
kind of humorous tolerance.

Saba had learned to sit quietly, patiently, drawing no attention to
herself. After her long stretches of neutral observance, she knew that the
people would forget her presence. She would become no more interesting
than another boulder, or a patch of scrubby grass, and it was then that she
turned on the recorder, making a record of music that had been handed
down through families over centuries and centuries of time.

It was good work. Important work. Saba was proud to be one of many
who quietly went about recording the songs and myths that had sustained
human beings since the cradle of civilization. Progress had brought to the
Earth untold advantages, but its pervasive growth was choking off in
ever-increasing numbers the very old languages, customs, and cultures of
peoples who had lived in harmony with the land since humans first
crossed the great continents.

It was indeed important work, Saba thought as one very small
three-year-old tripped and went rolling in the dust. The song broke up
into laughter. The children reformed into their line; one girl at the front
began singing again, soon joined by the others, as in the distance a group
of mothers and young unmarried women chattered and prepared food.

Important workтАФand involving work. It kept one busy, which in its
turn prevented one from worrying about those things that could not be
solvedтАФ

As she thought this, she became aware of a sound that perhaps had
warned her subliminally of approaching intrusions.

The faint hum, reminiscent of bees bumbling around flowers, resolved
into a battered old motorcycle drawing a three-wheeled side car. The rusty
machine was probably older than Saba herself.

The children heard it as well. For a moment they all went still, and then
their leader dashed through the dust to her mother. The other children
followed, some still laughing, others singing bits of song. The mothers
gathered their young and vanished into the sun-dried brush.

Saba climbed up on a boulder and shaded her eyes against the great,
bloodred late October sun. The driver of the motorcycle revved the engine
and zoomed around brush and scraggly trees, halting two meters from
Saba's rocks.

Saba held her breath as the wafting odors of petrol and exhaust blew
past, so unfamiliar after her month here in the wild mountainous region.
The driver, meanwhile, pulled off sunglasses and a tight baseball cap,
shaking free a cloud of curling brown hair. The clothingтАФtough,
anonymous bush garbтАФhad made gender difficult to guess at; a gloved