"Kim Stanley Robinson - A Short, Sharp Shock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

They tilted it so it reflected their two faces.

"Hey!" Thel exclaimed. "That's me."

It was the face he knew from a million beard burns: narrow jaw, round forehead, long nose, wide mouth.
He would have looked a long time but the reflection of the swimmer stole his gaze; it was her face, but
subtly transformed, the harsh strong lines emphasized and given a pattern, a human face before anything
else but so purely human that it was, he thought happily, that of a god.

They broke their gazes at the same time and looked at each other; grinning like children who have gotten
away with something forbidden, they let the mirror drop and rolled together. Blood surged through Thel
as they kissed and made love, he sank into her as if into a wave, riding inside the wave on an endless rise,
pulled along as when bodysurfing. Touch was everything then, her skin, the stone under his knees and
elbows; but once he looked up and saw the mirror beyond her head and filled with joy he waved a hand
over it: gold light flashed up into the chill salt predawn air.



12. The Facewomen



After that Thel carried the mirror bag himself. And the next night they saw bonfires ahead of them, to the
west. As they progressed along the low line of the old sandstone ridge, the air thick with salt and the roar
of waves, the peninsula took a pronounced swing to the north, making an immense arc thrown in the sea.
And to the west where the horizon washed over the black mark of the spit, a short line of bonfires
sparked against the late twilight sky. Apparently where these fires burnt the peninsula was quite a bit
taller, for the dots of yellow light were a good distance above the obsidian sea; nevertheless they
flickered to the point of disappearing briefly from sight. The three face-women stood and watched
intently. "They are our signal beacons," one said, and after a while added, "They say we are being
pursued."

So they began to hike all through the long days, and in the dawns and dusks, and each night the three
facewomen talked among themselves, and then one night their eye-faces talked among themselves, in
high-pitched voices; and yet they said to the other three travelers only, "We are being pursued."
Gradually the distance between the bonfires began to decrease, and the line of four was almost one wide
fire, growing brighter from right to left. Then they said, "We are being pursued; but we have almost
reached our home."

Wearily they hiked on, spurred by this pronouncement, and slept one more night out, and then the next
day in the late morning they came to a deep stone-ringed firepit. The leader of the facewomen crouched
and touched one of the stones. "We are home," her eyeface said. She and her two companions led the
way thereafter, skipping from knob to knob and touching each fire ring, then running downhill into the
next swale between knobs. The peninsula became broader and more verdant: between the bonfire tors
the crest ridge split in two broad lines of hilltops, holding between them sunken meadows spotted with
vernal ponds that were in this season patches of bright grass strewn with wildflowers, dots of pure color.
These meadows, strung like green stones on a necklace, grew larger and larger until they came on one
that was broad and flat, and ringed by a split-log fence and a number of low twisty pines. At the far side
of the fenced-in enclosure clustered a herd of small quick dark horses, flowing along the fence like a