"Tepper, Sheri S - A Plague Of Angels - plangel4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

Oracle snorted. "You didn't believe what Tom said, did you? I mean, he repeated what Oily told him, but she didn't tell him the truth. Those weren't the seven questions she was asked. And those sure as hell weren't the answers she gave."

Abasio merely stared at her, openmouthed.
eheve me," she snapped. "I know her. Knew her. But with all my oracular powers, I do not yet know the truth about her. Or about you."

The group held too much emotion for it to stay together. Every person in
it felt the need of surcease, quiet, pr/vacy, whether for thought or grief or merely sleep. All of them soon went off in different directions, to homes or rooms or newly offered spaces in the great silence that had come over the Place.
Abasio went out into this silence, thinking vaguely that he would find a tavern somewhere. In Fantis he had usually sought out a similar sort of place when deeply distressed, but here none seemed to be open. He was near the gate in the great wall when he saw Captain CummyNup Chingero, jeweled and bedecked, accosting this one and that one to ask if anyone there had seen Abasio the Cat or found his body. Abasio darted out, drew CummyNup into the gatehouse, and told him to keep his voice down.
"You alive!" crowed CummyNup, delighted past measure. "Wait till I
tell that Sybbis!"
Abasio shuddered. "No, CummyNup! No."
"You don' wan' I should tell her?"
"You--look ~,~ .
be ... ' ....... going to have to go off on a long, long journey.
gone years, maybe. You tell Sybb~s that, it would hurt her feelings.
Right?"


412 Sheri S. Tepper

CummyNup nodded dismally. It would hurt her feelings, and Sybbis wasn't that easy to get along with even when she was feeling good about things!
Abasio went on, "But she probably thinks I'm dead, fallen in battle, and that's honorable, right? So she's proud of me. And you can... go on, just the way you are. You'd like that, wouldn't you?" He nodded forcefully, making CummyNup nod along with him.
Nonetheless, CummyNup was doubtful. "She carryin' your baby, Basio."
"Well..." Abasio made an equivocal gesture. "Maybe. Then again,
maybe not. I'd be proud to have you be daddy, either way.""I s'pose to say you--'?"
"Dead," said Abasio. "Killed in battle. A hero."
"No!" CummyNup said stubbornly. "Gone, not dead. Like--well, jus' gone."
"Just gone," agreed Abasio, thinking of Olly. Why not? If one, why not both? He would be just gone!
Torn between grief and elation, CummyNup went back to Sybbis and the army. Soon they broke camp and moved away toward the northeast, where they would find an ideal place to settle--so said their resident seer, whom they had requested from an archetypal village, along with an archetypal Lady's Maid for Sybbis and an archetypal Nanny for the child soon to be born. The villages were being sprinkled outward into the world, and archetypes were needed once more.
Sybbis declared the new settlement would be called Abasiostown, to be ruled by herself and CummyNup until her child, Abasio's child, came of age. It was at her direction that much of the gangets' armamentarium was left behind.
"We not goin' to fight," she told CummyNup. "Got nobody to fight but us, and we not goin' to. I been talkin' to these Artemisian women. They got things to say that make sense, CummyNup!"
During recent days, Sybbis had acquired an almost regal dignity, which surprised her only a little less than it did anyone else. She had intended to be Queen of Abasiostown. Now she thought she might call herself Mothermost. Maternally, she extended to CummyNup her invitation that he continue as her consort and her permission for him to fetch Mama Chingero as well as Billibee and Crunch, if they wanted to come live in Abasiostown.

Berkli and Mitty went up in the Dome to check walker locations on the console. They wanted to be quite sure all had been destroyed. As they were leaving, they were confronted by Forsmooth Ander.
"Berkli," he said in his oleaginous voice. "Mitty."


i,'asll ' t

ags!
, and
jus~
ally,

A PLAGUE OF ANGELs
"Forsmooth, ,, they acknowleo~e~. 413
"The Anders have been
Happening?,, talking this OVer. This~what might one say'?
"Have you now,', grunted Mitty.
"Since none of the other mature Ellels