"Robertson, R Garcia - Gone To Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

forgive. Anyone who endured a two-day Naming Fast knew Thals had godawful long
memories.

From time to time Ellenor took off, soaring aloft to do a turn around the
landscape, looking for water. Near to dusk she found a dry bed winding through a
sandy bottom. Dismounting, Defoe attacked the damp sand with his mattock. An
hour of digging produced a small hole full of brackish liquid. He refilled his
canteen, then let the horses drink.

Ellenor alighted on a cutbank, saying a rider was coming.

Defoe nodded. Dusk was when they could expect company. Gathering dry grass and
brushwood, he made a bed for a fire. Then he took out a heat cap, a capsule the
size of an oral antibiotic, breaking it and tossing it on the wood. It burned
with an intense flame and acid odor.

He watched the rider trot warily into camp, separating from the red-orange disk
of Delta Eridani. It was Willungha, atop a giant male moropus. Thals did not
have aerial recon and orbital scans, but not much that went on in Tuch-Dah
country escaped Willungha's attention.

Despite rumors about him being a half-breed, or even Homo sapiens, the Tuch-Dah
chieftain was pure Neanderthal, with bulging brow ridges, buck teeth, and a
receding chin. That chin was the only weak thing about him. Willungha's huge
head and shoulders topped a meter-wide chest; arms the size of Defoe's calves
ended in hands strong enough to strangle a hungry saber-tooth (a perennial party
pleaser at Tuch-Dah fetes). An old scar ran along one gigantic thigh. In his
youth, Willungha had been gored by a wounded bison, the horn going through his
thigh. Hanging head down, with the horn tearing at his leg, Willungha had
clamped his good leg and left arm around the beast's neck. Calmly drawing a
sheath knife, he cut the bison's throat. Willungha's mount was an ancient cousin
of the horse and rhino, intended to be a browser and pruner -- recycling plant
material into the soil. AID had never thought a moropus could be ridden.

He grunted a greeting.

Defoe did not attempt to answer. Instead he unhobbled the horses, laying the
lead mare's halter rope ceremoniously before the Tuch-Dah. He kept back only a
pair of mounts and a lead horse for himself and Ellenor.

Willungha responded with a series of snorts. Wild Thals spoke a hideous
concoction of clicks, boots, and grunts, which some Homo sapiens claimed to
understand, but none could imitate. To the Tuch-Dah, Homo sapiens were
overwhelmingly deaf and totally dumb, hardly even a thinking species. Powerful
and unpredictable maybe, able to tear up the landscape like a mad moropus. But
reasoning? Even Willungha reserved judgment. He was tolerably familiar with "man
the wise" -- which explained his mixed opinion.

Having given gifts, Defoe moved to the next stop in the evening's entertainment,
setting up the recorder by the fire, so it would play on the cutbank. Using the