"Alastair Reynolds - Minla's Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

in a drab room inside the main compound. An adult was always stationed nearby,
but to all intents and purposes Merlin and the girl were permitted to interact freely.
Minla would show Merlin drawings and paintings she had done, or little
compositions, written down in labored handwriting in approximately the form of
script Tyrant had come to refer to as Lecythus A. Merlin would examine MinlaтАЩs
works and offer praise when it was merited.

He wondered why these meetings were allowed. Minla was obviously a bright
girl (he could tell that much merely from the precocious manner of her speaking,
even if he hadnтАЩt had the ample evidence of her drawings and writings). Perhaps it
was felt that meeting the man from space would be an important part of her
education, one that could never be repeated at a later date. Perhaps she had pestered
her father into allowing her to spend more time with Merlin. Merlin could understand
that; as a child heтАЩd also formed harmless attachments to adults, often those that
came bearing gifts and especially those adults that appeared interested in what he had
to show them.

Could there be more than that, though? Was it possible that the adults had
decided that a child offered the best conduit for understanding, and that Minla was
now their envoy? Or were they hoping to use Minla as a form of emotional
blackmail, so that they might exert a subtle hold on Merlin when he decided it was
time to leave?

He didnтАЩt know. What he was certain of was that MinlaтАЩs books raised as
many questions as they answered, and that simply leafing through them was enough
to open windows in his own mind, back into a childhood heтАЩd thought consigned
safely to oblivion. The books were startlingly similar to the books Merlin
remembered from the Palace of Eternal Dusk, the ones heтАЩd used to fight over with
his brother. They were bound similarly, illustrated with spidery ink drawings
scattered through the text or florid watercolors gathered onto glossy plates at the end
of the book. Merlin liked holding the book up to the light of an open window, so that
the illustrated pages shone like stained glass. It was something his father had shown
him on Plenitude, when he had been MinlaтАЩs age, and her delight exactly echoed his
own, across the unthinkable gulf of time and distance and circumstance that
separated their childhoods.

At the same time, he also paid close attention to what the books had to say.
Many of the stories featured little girls involved in fanciful adven-tures concerning
flying animals and other magic creatures. Others had the worthy, overearnest look of
educational texts. Studying these latter books, Merlin began to grasp something of
the history of Lecythus, at least insofar as it had been codified for the consumption
of children.

The people on Lecythus knew theyтАЩd come from the stars. In two of the
books there were even paintings of a vast spherical spaceship heaving into orbit
around the planet. The paintings differed in every significant detail, but Merlin felt
sure that he was seeing a portrayal of the same dimly remembered historical event,
much as the books in his youth had shown various representations of human settlers
arriving on Plenitude. There was no reference to the Waynet, however, or anything
connected to the Cohort or the Huskers. As for the localsтАЩ theory concerning the