"Liz Williams - The Age of Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Liz)

My thoughts dwelt on the warrior as the rider trundled along. I did not know who she was, what she
might represent, nor why she had chosen to manifest herself to me. I tried to tell myself that it was an
unfortunate coincidence, nothing more. Caud was full of ghosts these days.

Halfway along Gauze Street the rider broke down, spilling passengers out in a discontented mass. We
had to wait for the next available service and the schedule was disrupted. I was near the back of the
crowd and though I pushed and shoved, I could not get on the next vehicle and had to wait for the one
after that. I stood shivering in the snow for almost an hour, looking up at the shuttered faces of the
weedwood mansions that lined Gauze Street. Many of them were derelict, or filled with squatters. I saw
the gleam of a lamp within one of them: it looked deceptively welcoming.

By the time I reached the tenement, varying my route through the filthy alleys in case of pursuit, it was
close to the curfew gong. I hurried up the grimy stairs and triple-bolted the steel door behind me. I half
expected the flayed warrior to be waiting for me--sitting on the pallet bed, perhaps--but there was no
one there. The power was off again, so I lit the lamp and sat down at the antiscribe, hoping that the
battery had enough juice left to sustain a call to Winterstrike.

Gennera's voice crackled into the air.

"Anything?"

"No, not yet. I'm still looking." I did not want to tell her about the warrior.

"You have to find it," Gennera said. "The situation's degenerating, we're on the brink. The Caud
Matriarchy is out of control."

"You're telling me. The city's a mess. Public transport's breaking down, there are scissor-women
everywhere. They seek distraction, to blame all their problems on us rather than on their own
incompetence. The news-views whip up the population, night after night."

"And that's why we must have a deterrent."

"If it's to be found, it will be found in the library. What's left of it."

"They've delivered an ultimatum. You saw?"

"I saw. I have three days." There was a growing pressure in my head and I massaged my temples as I
spoke into the ├втВм╦Ьscribe. I felt a tingling on the back of my neck, as though something was watching me.
"I have to go. The battery's running down." It could have been true.

"Call me when you can. And be careful." The ├втВм╦Ьscribe sizzled into closure.

I put a pan of dried noodles over the lamp to warm up, then drew out the results of the day's research:
the documents that were too dirty or damaged to be scanned into the ├втВм╦Ьscribe. There was little of use.
Schematics for ships that had ceased to fly a hundred years before, maps of mines that had long since
caved in, old philosophical rants that could have been either empirical or theoretical, impossible to say
which. I could find nothing resembling the fragile rumor that had sent me here: the story of a weapon.

"If we had such a weapon, it would be enough," Gennera said. "We'd never need to use it. It would be
sufficient that we had it, to keep our enemies in check."