"Mary Rosenblum - Jumpers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

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Joaquin woke up in front of the monitor. In the green dawn light, its screen looked dull and gray, and his
neck ached like hell. The platform was empty. Three of the green fruits lay on a broad, waxy leaf. No
Zlia. No Silvano.
He had his jumpers. Joaquin touched the power switch, but nothing happened. Oh, yeah. He needed to
get the solar panels up where they could generate some juice. No rush. He had what he needed. Proof.
He closed his eyes, hugging himself, seeing those jumpers twisting, falling through space.

You can't take that away from me, Father.

Insects hummed in the leaves of this canopy world that had been allowed to evolve on its own because it
didn't matter to the Plantation managers. Joaquin stood and walked to the edge of the platform, squinting
into the soft green shadows, searching for Zlia. Spotted her in the distance, tarzanning between trees. He
smiled, watching her.

She was at play. Diving from on high, plummeting in freefall, she reached, touched, pushed off, changed
her trajectory and velocity, snagged a vine, swung hard and fast upward, looped up and over into an arc
like a childhood memory of some fantastic roller-coaster, vanishing briefly into the upper canopy. Up into
the blue sky? To see the sun that must be up there above the leaves? She plummeted down, so perfectly
balanced. Not in control. In balance. Control was not part of her world. It came to Joaquin in blinding
revelation. She had no need to control anything. Who else in the universe could ignore control? You
either controlled or were controlled. Hide-and-seek, Silvano had called it. Joaquin laughed, and the bitter
edge of that note, like shattered glass, seemed to wing across the thick green air between him and Zlia to
sever her wings. She dropped, snagged a liana, and tarzanned her way over to the platform.

"I left you fruit." She smiled at him, and the sheer light of her smile warmed him. He understood,
suddenly, how Silvano could be her lover. The claws didn't matter. "I saw your ghosts," she said. "I am
so happy."

"Me, too." It took him a moment to realize that these were two separate thoughts. "Why are you
happy?"

"Silvano went to get my eggs this morning." Her eyes sparkled with emerald flecks, glints of sunlight on
forest pools. "Oh, Joaquin, they will grow, I know it. I will take such good care of them!"

It was the first time she had ever used his name. "What do you mean?" His brain was slow, caught up
even as the words left his mouth. Oh, God. "Where did he go?" Her blink of wary incomprehension
enraged him, and he fought it down. "Zlia, where did Silvano go to collect your eggs? It's important to
take me there." He spoke to her wary recoil, desperate. "He doesn't understand my father. It's a trap! If I
don't help him тАж he'll lose your eggs. Zlia, I want you to have them." These last words were utter truth.
Maybe she heard that, because without another word, she unwound the line from her waist, whipped it
around a branch overhead, and leaped lightly up against his chest.

The touch of her prehensile toes and the prick of her claws as she wrapped her limbs around him didn't
bother him now. "Hold onto it," she commanded, and he grasped the tough, flexible handle of the line.
"Jump hard!"