"Sheri S. Tepper - Shadow's End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

"Yes, songfather." I suppose she will.

"Attend to the day. Soon you will go and our songs will go with you." He strides past me, toward the
song-study house.

So. The Gracious One has been mentioned in passing. I have fulfilled my destiny and said my words.
The songfather has said his words. Sweet-Sally and Grandpa have said no words at all. The thing is
resolved upon, whatever the thing is, and all Dinadhi know their parts in the pattern. They are they, and I
am Saluez, who turns and goes back into the hive, for there is much preparation to be made.

Still I cannot keep my head from going back, far back to let my eyes look high, there, among the
rimrock, among all those piles of stones where stands the House Without a Name. It has stood there
since the Dinadhi came to this place. One stands above every hive. This was the choice we were offered
by the Gracious One. This is the choice we made, so songfather says. We people of Dinadh.

But deep inside me I say no! No! This is not the choiceI made. I had no part in it. You songfathers made
this choice for me, and I have no part in it at all!

Songfather spoke to me at Cochim-Mahn on Dinadh. In another place another man spoke to another
woman. That place was the city of Alliance Prime on the world now called Alliance Central. The world
had once been called earth, when Alliance Central was only a department, a bureaucracy, that grew and
grew until all the earth was covered by Alliance Central and no one called it earth anymore. So I have
been taught, as all Dinadhi children are taught, for Dinadh is a member of the Alliance.

The powerful man was the Procurator himself, and the woman was Lutha Tallstaff. She was part of a
happening thing and I was part of the same happening thing, a branching of the pattern, as we say, though
she and I knew nothing of one another at the time. While we live, say the weavers, we are only the
shuttles, going to and fro, unable to see the pattern we are making, unaware of other shuttles in the weft.
After years we can look back to see the design we have made, the pattern Weaving Woman intended all
along. A time comes when one sees that pattern clear, and then one says, remember this, remember that;
see how this happened, see how that happened. Remember what the songfather said, what the
Procurator said.

What he first said was, "You knew Leelson Famber."

It was a statement of fact, though he paused, as one does when expecting an answer.

Lutha Tallstaff contented herself with a slight cock of her head, meaning all right, so? She was annoyed.
She felt much put upon. She was tired of the demands made upon her. Anyone who would send
invigilators to drag her from her bath and supperтАФnot literallydrag, of course, though it felt like itтАФto
this unscheduled and mysterious meeting at Prime needed no help from her! Besides, she'd last seen
Leelson four years ago.

"You knew Famber well." This time he was pushing.
Skinny old puritan, Lutha thought. Of course she had known Leelson well.

"We were lovers once," she replied, without emphasis, letting him stew on that as she stared out the tall
windows over the roofs of Alliance Prime upon Alliance Central.

A single ramified city-structure, pierced by transport routes, decked with plazas, fountains, and spires,