"Dan Simmons - The rise of Endymion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

me gasping up out of sleep at least once a week.
"But if you stay here," continued the girl seated on the edge of Mr. Wright's music stage, "you
will be outcasts. All of the groups of human beings here are involved in their own projects, their
own experiments. You will not fit in there."


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People shouted questions about that, demanding answers to mysteries not understood during their
long stay here.
But Aenea continued with what she was saying. "If you stay here, you will waste what Mr. Wright
has taught you and what you came to learn about yourself. The Earth does not need architects and
builders. Not now. We have to go back."
Jaev Peters spoke again. His voice was brittle, but not angry. "And does the Pax need builders
and architects? To build its cross-damned churches?"
"Yes," said Aenea.
Jaev pounded the back of the seat in front of him with his large fist. "But they'll capture or
kill us if they learn who we are ... where we've been!"
"Yes," said Aenea.
Bets Kimbal said, "Are you going back, child?"
"Yes," said Aenea and pushed herself away from the stage.
Everyone was standing now, shouting or talking to the people next to them. It was Jaev Peters
who spoke the thoughts of the ninety Fellowship orphans. "Can we go with you, Aenea?"
The girl sighed. Her face, as sunburned and alert as it looked this morning, also looked tired.
"No," she said. "I think that leaving here is like dying or being born. We each have to do it
alone." She smiled. "Or in very small groups." The room fell silent then. When Aenea spoke, it was
as if a single instrument were picking up where the orchestra had stopped. "Raul will leave
first," she said. "Tonight. One by one, each of you will find the right farcaster portal. I will
help you. I will be the last to leave Earth. But leave I will, and within a few weeks. We all must
go."
People pushed forward then, still silent, but moving closer to the girl with the short-cropped
hair. "But some of us will meet again," said Aenea. "I feel certain that some of us will meet
again."
I heard the flip side of that reassuring prediction: some of us would not survive to meet
again.
"Well," boomed Bets Kimbal, standing with one broad arm around Aenea, "we have enough food in
the kitchen for one last feast. Lunch today will be a meal you'll remember for years! If you have
to travel, as my mum used to say, never travel on an empty stomach. Who's to help me in the
kitchen then?"
The groups broke up then, families and friends in clusters, loners standing as if stunned,
everyone moving closer to Aenea as we began filing out of the music pavilion. I wanted to grab her
at that moment, shake her until her wisdom teeth fell out, and demand, What the hell do you mean?
"Raul will leave first ... tonight." Who the hell are you to tell me to leave you behind? And how
do you think you can make me? But she was too far away and too many people were pressing around
her. The best I could do was stride along behind the crowd as it moved toward the kitchen and
dining area, anger written in my face, fists, muscles, and walk.
Once I saw Aenea glance back, straining to find me over the heads of the crowd around her, and
her eyes pleaded, Let me explain.
I stared back stonily, giving her nothing.