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

"I'll talk," I said, when she came across. "But only to you."

I could see indecision in her face. It was not really a question of how intelligent the scissor-women were;
they operated on agendas that were partially programmed, and partly opaque to the rest of us. Her voice
came though the grill.

"I am activating the antiscribe," she said. "Speak."

"My name is Aletheria Tole. I am from Tharsis. I assumed another identity, which was implanted. I came
here looking for my sister, who married a woman from Caud many years ago...."

I continued to speak, taking care to modulate the rhythm of my voice so that it became semi-hypnotic.
The scissor-women had programming to avoid mind control, but this was something else entirely. As I
spoke, I looked into her pale eyes and glimpsed her soul. I drew it out, as I had been taught so many
years before on the Plains. It span across the air between us, a darkling glitter. The door was no barrier.
I opened my mouth and sucked it in. It lay in my cheek like a lump of ice.

The scissor-woman's face grew slack and blank.

"Step away from the door," I said. She did so. I bent my head to the haunt-lock and released her soul. It
fled into the lock, tracing its engrams through the circuit mechanisms, grateful to be free of me. The door
swung open; I stepped through and struck the scissor-woman at the base of the skull. She crumpled
without a sound. My own ├втВм╦Ьscribe was sitting on a shelf: they would have copied its contents. I
snatched it up and ran through the maze of corridors.

Discovery was soon made. I heard a cry behind me, feet drumming on the ceiling above. I headed
downward, reasoning that in these old buildings the best chance of escape lay in the catacombs below.
When I reached what I judged to be the lowest level, I ducked into a chamber and flicked on the
antiscribe as I ran. I could not get a signal for Winterstrike. But then, turning the corner, I found the
flayed warrior before me.

"Where, then?" I said aloud, not expecting her to respond, but once more the ghost beckoned. I followed
the rust-red figure through the labyrinth, through tunnels swimming with unknown forms: women with the
heads of coyu and aspiths, creatures that might have been men. I ignored the weir-wards, being careful
not to touch them. Sometimes the warrior grew faint before me and I was beginning to suspect why this
should be. I could hear no signs of pursuit, but that did not mean that none were following. The
scissor-women could be deadly in their silence.

At last we came to a door and the warrior halted. In experiment, I closed down the ├втВм╦Ьscribe and she
was no longer there. I put it on again, and she reappeared.

"You're no ghost," I said. She was speaking. There was still no sound, but the words flickered across the
screen.

She was not conversing. The words were lists of archived data, skeins of information. I had not been
entirely correct. She was not the ghost of a warrior. She was the ghost of the library, the animated form
of the cached archives that we had believed to be destroyed, and that the Caud matriarchy, in their
ignorance, had not bothered to find.