"Sheri S. Tepper - After Long Silence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

at I-told-you-so.

After the trip, Harmony was blessedly dull, a small deepsoil pocket, entirely agricultural. Still, the food
and beds were good, and Tasmin took half an hour to pay a condolence call on his mother's sister
Betuny, a woman not close enough to ever have been called "aunt." Her husband had died only recently,
and Tasmin brought a letter from his mother. After this duty call, he returned to the Trip House to find
Renna Clarin on the porch waiting for him. She had wrapped a bright scarf around her head and wore a
matching robe, vividly striped. For the first time he noticed how lovely she was, a thought that caught him
with its oddness. He was not accustomed to thinking of the neophytes as lovely.

"I wanted to thank you, sir."

"For what, Clarin? You did a good job out there."

"For тАж for not jumping all over me when I got scared."

She was standing slightly above him on the porch, a tall girl with a calm and perceptive manner. Without
the Tripsinger's robe she looked thinner, more graceful, and he remembered the feel of her body against
his when he had hugged her. One always hugged students at times of peril, but he realized with a flush
that she was the first female student he had ever precepted. "So you were scared?" he asked softly.
"Really scared?"

"Really scared." She laughed a little, embarrassed at the admission.

"So was I. I often am. After a while you тАж you look forward to it. When you're really scared, the whole
world seems to тАж brighten."

She considered this, doubtfully. "That's hard to imagine."

"Trust me. It happens. Either it happens, or you get into some other line of work."

She flushed, thanked him again, and went down the hall to her room. In his own room, Tasmin lay
awake, conscious of the towering escarpments all around the town, gathered Presences so quiet that one
could hear choruses of viggies singing off in the hills. Echoes of that surge of emotion hitting him that
morning were with him still, a welling apprehension, half pleasurable, half terrifying. It had seldom come
so strongly. It had seldom lasted so long. He lay there, his body tasting it, listening to the viggies singing
until almost midnight.

He had his first-trippers up and traveling as soon as there was enough light. They stared at the Black
Tower long enough to be impressed with the sheer impossibility of the thing while Tasmin, Jamieson close
behind him, read silently from the prayers for the dead. The remains of Miles Ferrence lay somewhere in
that welter of crystal trash at the bottom of the tower. After Miles Ferrence had died, Tasmin had gone
back to the original explorer's notes and done a new Black Tower score, dedicated to the memory of his
father. He had really done it to please his mother, and so far no one using it had died. Today he got them
through by singing it himself, with Jamieson doing backup.

After the Black Tower, the Far Watchlings seemed minor league stuff, good practice, but with nothing
very interesting about them. James asked to be excused. The sense of awe and mystery that Tasmin had
been reveling in departed as they came through the last of the Watchlings and saw Deepsoil Five awaiting
them at the bottom of the long slope. Back to reality again. Tasmin heaved a deep breath. He would be