"Karen Traviss - Wess'Har 01 - City of Pearl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Traviss Karen)

could not easily glean from the intercepted data transmissions.

The navigator turned and labored through the drifts until the irregular crunch of his boots vanished. The
youngster was from the warmlands and even less able to tolerate freezing conditions than the average
wess'har.

But Aras was not an average wess'har. And nor were the comrades he had lost.
Goodbye, Cimesiat. I'm truly sorry. Aras glanced around the landscape. There was no funeral to be
held here, no remains of his friend to re-enter the cycle of life, so he simply remembered. In the coming
season there would be black grasses as far as the eye could see, the sharp and glossy blades that grew
nowhere else on Bezer'ej. If only they had never landed on this island--if only the isenj had never landed
here--then Cimesiat would have died naturally at the proper time. Instead, he had been driven to destroy
himself, the fifty-eighth of the remaining c'naatat troops to take his own life since the last of the wars.
Peace made you purposeless if you let it. Aras had found his purpose in another war, a slower and more
considered battle to protect Bezer'ej. One day he would win it, and he thought of his comrades and
wondered if it was a victory for which he would be prepared.

There were just three of his squadron left, without family, without purpose, without any of the things that
made a wess'har want to live. But I have my world, Aras thought. I have duties here enough for
another three lifetimes, now that the gethes are coming.

He squatted and dug his claws into the snow, pushing down into the hard-frozen soil beneath as if he
were connecting with it in the disposal rite that Cimesiat would never have. "Forgive me," he said aloud.
"I should have known better."

There was silence again. It was a crisp and perfect calm, except for the occasional distant clank of
closing hatches and the hum of motors. This was a dead homestead, industrial and unwelcoming, without
life or community. The gray composite walls curved into a featureless roof.

Buildings always bothered Aras. This one was conspicuous, placed where anyone could see it. Imposing
on the natural landscape was a vulgar act, an alien's taste, not a wess'har practice. The arrogance of it
nagged at him. He stood up and stared at the horizon north of the island. All the lights on the shoreline
had gone; after centuries all traces of isenj building had been reclaimed and erased by the wilderness. It
had taken far less time to erase the isenj themselves.

So gethes built to be seen, too. That was all he could note. He followed the path churned up by the
navigator all the way back to the ship, to avoid leaving any more of a mark than was absolutely necessary
on the featureless whiteness.

"We must take it all away," Aras said. "Their construction must be moved from this place."

"And will you erase the gethes when they come?" the navigator asked. He had that bright expression--a
mix of fear and adulation--that Aras had seen too many times. You were the Restorer. You can save us
again. "Or will we take them before they land?"

The youngster's eyes darted between Aras's face and his claws. Every normal wess'har--clawless, heirs
to death--seemed to stare at those claws.

"I will decide that when we know more about them. If they seek refuge, I will examine their need." Aras
paused, and wondered again if he could have acted differently long ago; but he knew he could not have