"Tepper, Sheri S - A Plague Of Angels - plangel3" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

224 Sheri S. Tepper

dipped his hands and wrists, letting them soak while he considered what had happened, what would happen in the morning. If what Coyote had said was true, the two humans should not be too quick to move in the morning. Give the Orphan-hunters time to get through the gate before Oily and Abasio came there. And proceed through the gate with the least possible fuss and no tantrum of outraged masculinity.
He returned the dye pot to Olly and went on to the barrel for water to rinse his hands and arms. Behind him, he heard the even thwack, thwack, thwack of the dye block slapped down on the cloth squares. When he returned, she was adding another fluid to the bucket, one she'd been steeping so she could amplify her pattern with another hue. She was working with a troubled,
distracted air. Abasio watched her, head cocked, worried by her silence. The firelight jumped, gleaming from bright runnels on her cheeks. "You're crying!" he exclaimed, suddenly guilty over his recent anger and irritation. The silent tears dripped from her jaw, and she licked them from the corners of her mouth. "Oily, sweet..."
She leaned into his arms, crying, "Abasio, why are they hunting me'? I haven't done anything to anybody." She shook her head, the tears flying. "l was just beginning to think I knew something about me. I try to forget there are people--things hunting me, but then something reminds me, and it makes me so--scared."
It was the voice of a child, lonely and forlorn. It was Elrick-Ann's voice, the voice of his ma when she had looked in the mirror at the tattooed emblems on her breast and wept for her youth. It was the cry of the lost lambs he had been sent after in his boyhood, to find them and return them to the fold. It was his own voice, a few times he remembered, when all had seemed past understanding or acceptance.
Abasio held her more tightly, rocking slowly back and forth by the coals of the fire where the stewpot steamed and bubbled and the little fire made cracking noises in the night. It was Coyote's talk of the hunters that had set her off, but he had laid the groundwork for her misery. He silently cursed himself and things in general. For the moment it didn't matter that he couldn't lust after her. He cared for her in her trouble and pain, and for this firelit time, that was enough.

The walkers were among the first through the gate the following morning. They had passes that, they said, allowed them to cross any border. The type of pass was so unfamiliar, however, that the person in charge at the gate had to summon her captain before opening the barrier and letting them through.
"Enjoy your travels through Artemisia," the captain said, nodding politely


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but distantly, wondering at the difficulty she was having in keeping her voice at its natural pitch and intensity. She wanted to gasp, to squeak. She wanted to run and hide.
"One moment," said the taller walker, refusing to be dismissed.
The captain summoned all her discipline to quell a shudder and put on an attentive face.
"We're seeking a female person of about twenty years. We are told she has dark hair and eyes. It is likely she is traveling alone. Have you seen such a one?"
The captain shook her head. "What has she done?"
"1 did not say she had done anything," the taller walker said, raising his brows. "Why we seek her is our business only. Not your business."
The captain swallowed the bile that seeped bitterly at the back of her tongue and said carefully, "I merely thought more information might help me assist you better."
"You need no more information. Answer the question."
The captain turned to the gatekeeper, who shook her head wordlessly.
"No," whispered the gatekeeper. "Only men, traders, truckers, a few older couples, but no woman traveling alone."
The questioners turned without further word and left, stalking out through the gate and into the countryside along the road that led to the town.
"What kind of a pass did they have?" the gatekeeper asked her captain in a trembling whisper. "Who are they?"
The older woman shook her head. 'kit was issued by the Place of Power. It's rather like the ones the name-changers and the book-burners carry. These ·.. people are called walkers; the people from manland talk about them, I've not seen them before; they don't frequent Artemisia much; but that is no doubt what they are."
She dusted her hands together, furrowing her brow, "I'd better get to town before they get there. I need to talk to Wide Mountain Mother about this."
She galloped away on one of the swift horses reserved for officers on urgent business. She left behind her a gatekeeper bursting with curiosity. Most days at the gate were boring enough that any exceptional happening made a welcome break in the routine. The gatekeeper hadn't been told to be quiet about it, so with hints and whispers and dramatic shudders, she told everyone who came through about the two strangers and their pass.
"So they said it was none of our business why they wanted her," she murmured, as she shunted Abasio and Olly's wagon off toward a small structure under the shade of several large trees. "Can you imagineT'
'~And they had a pass?" Oily asked, not needing to pretend interest. ~They did. Not that they'd have needed one, if they'd wanted to come


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in regardless, for it's clear they go where they will! Their pass was issued by the Place of Power, my watch captain said, and that's a mystery, isn't it? We get some of our machinery from the Place, west of us, though I've never been there myself. The book-burners come from there. But why should the Place of Power send beings like that wandering about? I tell you, it made me shiver just hearing them speak. Like when you wake in the night to hear--I don't know. Some strange sound outside your window where no sound should be."
"Our dog often barks at such sounds," rumbled Abasio, tossing a wicked glance in Coyote's direction.
"Dogs hear things we don't!" cried the gatekeeper, looking directly at Coyote, who lay on the wagon seat looking perfectly doglike and servile. "So do cats, or even birds. Earthquakes, for instance. Animals hear things and they howl. I'll tell you, these beings made me want to howl, as though I'd heard something horrid without knowing it." She flapped her hand at them, miming her discomfiture, and pointed to the door of the small structure. "Now you go on in there. The Mankind Management officer will be with you in two pumps of a ram's rump."
"Lamb's tail," said Abasio gravely, remembering his youth among the flocks. "It's the lambs that shake their tails."
"Maybe in your country," giggled the gate guard. "But our rams seem to do most of it here."
Then she was gone, and the two of them were left staring at each other in a small, bare room that smelled strongly of chemicals.
The woman who joined them was lean, horsefaced, and pleasantly matterof-fact. She explained the controls she could offer, the belts, the surgery, the implants, the escorts; she agreed that Abasio's condition was worrisome, took samples of various body fluids, and went off to consider the matter. When she returned some time later, she looked thoughtful.
"In one sense, you're healthy," she said to Abasio. "You have no sign of IDDIs, rare for a ganget--and I assume you were a ganger, from the scars you bear. You have no evidence of plague, which is more or less endemic in manland. You are ailing, however, and we have no antidote to what's ailing you. So far as we know, there is none. None, that is, except the drug you took in the first place, one available in the cities, which is no doubt where you got it."
"I didn't take it," said Abasio stiffly, giving up any pretense of hiding his history. "Someone gave it to me without my knowledge."
"Whichever," she said. "More of it would make you feel quite your old self, for a time, but it would not be a good idea for the long run, as I'm sure you've figured out."
Abasio nodded dismally.


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