"K. D. Wentworth - Embians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

"Wait!" Shayna feels on the edge of understanding something vast and complex.
She senses unseen colors lurking out there, waiting to be discovered,
interpreted, felt. There are worlds within those colors, epiphanies too large
for the conscious mind to enfold. Her hands knot together. "There might be a few
more."

"Look, the only pair within range found each other." Mae's voice is exasperated.
"What more do you want?"

What she wants, with a fierceness that frightens her, is something of her own,
something not observed and written down in neat piles of notebooks, or
catalogued on a computer screen, or stored as a visual record. She wants Mae's
hand tracing the contours of her bare shoulder, craves Mae's perspiring body
sleeked against her side in the loneliness of the night while outside the rain
patters down and, inside, recycled air whirs. From the beginning, though, Mae
has made it quite clear she does not waste her time on petty matters of the
flesh with anyone, man or woman. Mae is all business, inviolate to everything
but concerns of the mind, and her first rejection of Shayna's overtures was so
painful, Shayna cannot bear to risk a second.

Her face hot, Shayna switches the lantern on, and then; by its pristine white
glow, pulls up the trap door and climbs down to the dark tangle of the forest
floor alone.

SHAYNA SLEEPS restlessly in the confines of her own bunk until noon, Aelta's
noon, that is. The days are longer here, like the steamy, languid nights, and
few creatures of any real mass stir under the blazing cauldron of the
yellow-white sun. Inside the small research bungalow on the forest floor,
though, the conditioned air is blissfully cool, allowing sleep or activity,
whatever the hour.

Mae wakens even later and emerges from her room, rumpled and blinking. Her short
ash-gold hair is plastered to her forehead. She is all muscles and planes, sense
and organization. She stretches and smiles wanly. "We got some good footage last
night."

Sitting at the metal kitchenette counter, Shayna nods over unsweetened coffee.

"I want to go to the cliffs and film the burrows again," Mae says. "My last
tapes were too dark."

Shayna finds herself reluctant to return there, although it is safe to walk the
jungle in the daylight. Embians are nocturnal and the local insect population
disdains the alien taste of human skin and blood, but the sight of the sleepers
curled into tight fetal balls, the light-generating organs on their chests pale
and lifeless, disturbs her. When she looks at them so vulnerable, she feels
guilty for spying on their love-making night after night.

"I have some transcriptions to make." Her hands tremble as she picks up her cup.
"I'll meet you in the blind later."