"Marta Randall - Journey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Randall Marta)

They won't hurt you. Here, come down with me and you'll see."
Hart stared at her in shock. Her face seemed to shift, to become
briefly maggot-like. Before the features of his sister reestablished
themselves, he pushed from her arms, swayed for a moment, then kicked her
thigh and fled down the length of the balcony.
"Hart!" Quilla cried, but his single-minded flight did not change. He
leaped at a rope ladder and swayed precariously for a moment, then swarmed
down the ladder out of sight. Quilla stood and rubbed her thigh. She picked up
the glow lamp and glanced down the length of the balcony before turning toward
the storage bins.
She did not stop at the outer bins, knowing that Mish would have
already emptied them. Instead, she moved toward the wall of the barn, skirting
bailing ropes and castaway lumber, until she stood before a large bin almost
hidden amid the barn's detritus. She reached up without looking and hung the
glow lamp on a nail, pushed aside the lid of the box, and stared within at the
stuff of fantasy. A spare piece of solar sheeting made a spacer's cloak; a
tattered red blanket had dignified the banquets and judgments of monarchs and
friends. The jaunty green hat of a space merchant, the peaked cap of a
Contestor, the epaulets of the Warlord of Saturn V, all made of twisted and
braided grass. Laur's old gowns, now the vestments of emperors and courtesans,
pirates and fools. Crowns, swords, blasters, shrouds, tents, rugs, all the
years of Quilla's childhood thrown together in a heap of rags and glory. The
muted noise of the refugees and the soft, dark smells of the barn faded, and
Quilla saw magic in the box before her, the simple sorceries which allowed the
figures of her books and of her dreams to come to life and, briefly inhabiting
her body, and Jes', and Hart's, stalk the narrow passageways of the barn,
living their stories again. Then the noises from below pressed in on her, and
for a moment she could almost find her way into Hart's pain and terror. She
lingered for a moment on a ledge of comprehension and loss before the magic
within the box paled into a jumble of tawdry, stained, and ragged cloth. She
lifted out the canopies of kings, the shroud of a dead warlock, the rugs from
far, imaginary cities, the tents of nomads, the spacer's cloak, carefully
folding the cloth and piling it on the floor beside her, until all that
remained in the box were a few bits of wood, some shards of plastic, and the
caps of grass. She lowered the lid of the box and slung the cloth over her
shoulder. Picking up the lamp, she hesitated again, then trudged toward the
rope ladder, her weariness suddenly hard upon her.
She stepped from the swaying ladder and turned to face the crowd,
searching for her father amid the moving shapes. Eventually she saw him
standing near the far wall wielding a pitchfork, while others collected the
hay he tossed to them and spread it over the hard-packed dirt floor. Already
people curled into the hay, their coats tucked under their heads and arms over
their eyes. One woman lay with an infant held to her breast; the woman with
the holocubes had spread them around her and activated them, and she slept
surrounded by the pale light of beloved faces. Quilla turned again to search
for her mother, but as she did so, people came to her and looked at the
cloths. She offered them to the waiting hands, then dumped the remainder by
the door and wandered through the barn, trying to find a familiar face. Jason
climbed from the loft and, leaning against his pitchfork, watched the
spreading of the hay. She took a step toward him, then he bent to arrange hay