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

Familiar, Lutha thought. Now there was a word. The crisis had been when? Almost a century ago. And
on the frontier, to boot. Why in the world would a linguist like herselfтАФa document expert, yes, but
withal a mere functionaryтАФbe expected to be "familiar" with such distant and ancient history?

She put her mind in neutral and stared at the table, noticing the foods she found most attractive were
now closer to her and the disgusting dishes had been removed. How did the shadows know? Was her
face that easy to read? Or were the shadows taught to interpret the almost imperceptible twitches and
jerks most people made without realizing it. Were they empaths, like Fastigats? Perhaps they actually
were Fastigats, turned invisible as penance for some unseemly behavior. Fastigats were great ones for
seemliness.

What had the old man been talking of? Of course. "Ularian crisis," she said. "Around twenty-four
hundred of the common era, a standard century ago, give or take a little. Alliance frontier worlds in the
Hermes Sector were overrun by a race or force or something called Ularians." She paused, forehead
wrinkled. "Why was it named that?"

"The first human populations that vanished were in a line, a vector, that led toward the Ular Region," he
replied.

She absorbed the fact. "So, this something wiped all human life off a dozen worlds or systems orтАФ"

The Procurator gestured impatiently at this imprecision.

She gave him a half smile, mocking his irritation. "Well, a dozen somethings, ProcuratorтАФyou asked
what I knew and I'm telling you." She resumed her interrupted account, "Sometime later the Ularians
went away. Thereafter, briefly, occurred the Great Debate, during which the Firster godmongers said
Ularians didn't exist because the universe was made for man, and the Infinitarians said Ularians could
exist because everything is possible. Both sides wrote volumes explaining Ularians or explaining them
awayтАФon little or no evidence, as I recallтАФand the whole subject became so abstruse that only scholars
care one way or the other."

The Procurator shook his head in wonder. "You speak so casually, so disrespectfully of it."

She considered the matter ancient history. "I shouldn't be casual?"

He grimaced. "At the time humansтАФat least those who knew what was going onтАФfeared for the
survival of the race."

"Was it taken that seriously?" she asked, astonished.

"It was by Alliance Prime, by those who knew what was happening! All that saved us from widespread
panic was that the vanished settlements were small and few. Publicly, the disappearances were blamed
on environmental causes, even though people vanished from every world in Hermes SectorтАФthat is,
every one but Dinadh."
 She shrugged, indicating disinterest in Dinadh. She who was to learn so much about Dinadh knew and
cared nothing for it then.

The Procurator went on. "My predecessors here at Prime could learn nothing about the Ularians. The
only evidence of the existence of an inimical force was that men had disappeared! Prime had no idea why
theyтАФorit тАФattacked in the first place."