"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 10 - The Yoke of Shen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

The trio toddled back to their hotel to tell the others, but the black woman and the orange hermaphrodite weren't there.
Kalahari and Sweetface and Trafalgar decided to split another bottle and wait so they could apprise the others of their
plan, but they fell asleep instead.
Next day, since they had not used antintoxicants and hadn't even taken any vitamin B-l, they all had headaches.
So did Quindy and Cinnabar, who had arrived at the same decision. The first one. All five of them moped and
moaned most of the day, but they did agree on their course
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of action. It was about as sensible as it could be under the circumstances, which was not very.
Kalahari Cuw was wealthy. Her ship-Satana-v/as gone, traded off to Janja who had traded it off to a banker on
Franji for the newer and better-equipped spacer she had named Sunmother. The captain of Satana (Hellfire, a pi-rate),
badly used and hurt and scared, full of intimations of mortality not to mention jail cells and worse, had decided to
retire as Kalahari Cuw.
For the present, she would "retire" on Terasaki, in Yamato under the suns Durga and Hubble. Find
something to do to occupy herself. And keep looking for Janja. Janjy, Kalahari Cuw called her.
The others would do the logical insanity of clearing ship-Quindy was, after all, captain of Sunmother and there'd be
no problem in gaining clearance-to begin the impossible mission of scouting the spaceways for Sun-mother's owner.
What else did they have to do, Quindy said, hoping the question was rhetorical and glancing ner-vously at Trafalgar
Cuw, who should have something else to do. But he nodded. It was his idea, anyhow, or his and Kalahari's.
The plan was ab.out as practical as Socialism, but it was what they felt they had to do.
Sunmother's owner was Janja and she had been recruited/ kidnapped from the other hotel, and she didn't know
where she was, either.
Strangely, by the time they redshifted Terasaki's orbit-ing docking station, one of her five former companions did.
Before noon of the fifth day-Terasak, spaceship Sun-mother had clearance and, without even taking on cargo,
departed Ukiyostation. In quest of Janja.
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Not how insignificant our bodies are, but rather how potent the human mind is-this is the real lesson of modern
astronomy.
-William J. Kaufmann, Black Holes and Warped Spacetime


The Great God Hinun awoke. Not with a resounding cho-rus of thunder and lightning that split the heavens as if
bellowed up from a majestic mountain peak to proclaim the indomitable power and might that coursed through divine
sinews. No; Hinun the Eater of Minds came awake with a startled jerk of his head and a half-flutter of time-wearied
eyelids.
Hinun, He-Who-Has-Lived-And-Died-A-Thousand-Times (an exaggeration of truth that Hinun cultivated to fan
flames of awe and terror among his worshippers-al-though his reign had spanned a millennium). His body betrayed by
the rapid approach of the never-ending life/death/life cycle, he felt no surge of unrestrained strength, godly or
otherwise.
Today he merely hungered.
Today he would eat.
When the sole deity of the planet Shen dined, feasting tables were not strewn with a bountiful banquet of exotic
meats and sweets befitting a god. Neither did Hinun par-take of ambrosia or nectar, the classical epicurean cuisine of
the now-forgotten gods of Urth called Homeworld.
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The gnawing hunger consuming Hinun did not stem from the physical needs the Great God shared with his
worshippers. To provide for his body's requirements, Hinun supped on a normal variety of food and drink. For in
form, at least, Sheh's one and only god was human.
This day Hinun would fill a deeper need, sate a deeper desire. One that had ruled the designer of destiny on Shen
for a thousand years. The very essence of human existence would be his fare. Human in body and in appearance,