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

Enigmalet that had appeared from nowhere, almost at the side of the road, miles out of its range.
Sometimes the damned things seemed to grow up overnight! As 'lets they were easy to dispose of, and
someone should have disposed of this one. When they got to 'ling size, it was a very different and difficult
thing.

He could see the Enigma peaks clearly. The great Presence was bifurcated almost to its base, rearing
above the plain like a bloody two-tined fork. Five miles more. At the end of it he found his own car
parked against the barricade. He could feel the ground tremble as he set his feet on it, and he hastily
removed his shoes and took the glasses from the compartment. How high would Lim have dared go?
How high would Celcy go with him, and how high would he dare go after them?

The world shivered under his feet, twitching like the hide of a mule under a biting fly. It wanted him off. It
wanted him away. Moreover, it wanted those others off as well. He bit his lip and kept on. It was three
miles to the summit from where one could actually see the faces of the Enigma itself, shattered plane of
glowing scarlet, fading into a wall that extended east and west as far as had ever been traveled, a mighty
faceted twin mountain that stood in an endless forest of Enigmalings, looming over the plains along the
empty southern coast.

He climbed and stopped, scarcely breathing, climbed again. To his left, a pillar of bloody crystal
squeaked to itself, whined, then shivered into fragments. He cried out as one chunk buried itself in a bank
a foot from his head. One of the smaller fragments must have hit him. He wiped blood from his eyes.
Other pillars took up the whine. He controlled his trembling and went on. Surely Celcy wouldn't go on.
As frightened of the Presences as she was? She wouldn't go on. Unless she had no choice. Lim had
always taken what he wanted. Perhaps now he was simply taking Celcy, because he wanted her.

He reached the top of a high, east-west ridge from which he could peer through a gap in the next rise. A
narrow face of scarlet crystal shone to the left of the gap and another to the right, the twin peaks of the
Enigma. From somewhere ahead, he heard a voice тАж

Lim. Singing. He had a portable synthesizer with him, a very good one. All around Tasmin, the shivering
ceased and quiet fell. Desperately, he climbed on, scrambling up the slope, finding the faint path almost
by instinct. Something traveled here to keep his trail clear. Not people, but something.

The voice was rising, more and more surely. Silence from the ground. Absolute quiet. Tasmin tried to
control his breathing; every panting breath seemed a threat.

Then he was at the top.

The path wound down to a small clearing between the two faces of the Enigma. Celcy sat on a stone in
the middle of it, pale but composed, her hands clasped tightly in front of her as though to keep them from
shaking, her face knitted in concentration. Lim stood at one edge, his hands darting over the synthesizer
propped before him, his head up, singing. On the music rack of the synthesizer, the Enigma score
fluttered in a light wind.

Tasmin put his head in his hands. He didn't dare interrupt. He didn't dare go on down the path. He didn't
dare to call or wave. He could only poise himself here, waiting. Silently, he sang with Lim. The Petition
and Justification. God, the man was talented. It should take at least three people to get those effects, and
he was doing it alone, sight reading. Even if he had spent several hours reviewing the score before coming
out here, it was still an almost miraculous performance. He had to be taking something that quickened his
reaction time and heightened his perceptions. There was no way a man could do what he was doing