"Sheri S. Tepper - Jinian Stareye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

screaming, mightier than any fleshy voice, metal on air, burning gasses, hot shrieking wind.

Down from above a silver spearhead, falling butt end first, buoyed on its bellowing, gas-farting rear,
down into the green. I smelled the burning; trees burst into flame; the grass crisped into ash; smoke
billowed into the morning. Then quiet. A feeling of dread; dread and excitement, curiosity and pain.
Mixed.

A door opened high on the silver spearhead, and a strange creature came out. It was too thick through to
be normal. Too thin from side to side and too thick from back to front. Not star-shaped, as would have
been normal. Limbs oddly jointed. Naked-faced. Not attractive. Ugly, rather. It called with a weak little
voice into the shadowed bowl. Um, um, blah, um. Uttering nonsense. Um, um, blah. I knew what it was
saying but

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could not understand a word. A nasty little human creature, an invader, and I could not understand a
word.

I shook myself, frightened, grasping Peter's arm and hanging on as though I were drowning. I had not
seen that creature through my own eyes but through the eyes of- the world. Through Lom's eyes. I gasped,
blinked, tried to find myself in all this.

'Jinian . . . Jinian?' He was shaking me gently, looking at me with that tender concern he showed
sometimes, the kind that made my heart turn over and stop beating.

'It's all right,' I breathed. 'It's all right. Let's get out of here.' I tugged him to our left along the rim of the
cliff, toward the grove of midnight trees. He followed me reluctantly, eyes turned back to watch that
silvery vehicle in its patch of burned grass. Just before we reached the tree, the silver vessel disappeared
from the green bowl below and we heard the howling begin high above us. As we stepped into the
shadow, I looked up. It was coming down again. Below us in the valley the green meadow was
untouched; the blackened scar had vanished.

'What?' Peter started to say.



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'Shh,' I said. 'Just come on a few more steps, then we'll figure it out.' I was shaken. When I had been here
before, I had merely observed, not been battered about by these waves of feeling.

We stepped out from the shadow of the tree onto the Wastes of Bleer. The place was unmistakable; a high
plateau, barren and drear, with the contorted shapes of the Wind's Bones all around. Thorn bush and
devil's spear and great Wind's Bones. There was no feeling here, only a waiting numbness.

'Quick,' I said to Peter, moving toward the crevasse I remembered from the time before. 'Before it comes
down on our heads.' Above us, out of a clear sky, a moon was falling at us, burning bright, soundlessly,

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