"Sean Williams & Simon Brown - The Masque Of Agamemnon(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Sean)

surprise it was exactly the same as the one he had been given.
"I don't understand, Achilles. Are we going as brothers?"
Achilles laughed. "As lovers, dear Patroclus. But there is more to it than
symbolism."
Patroclus looked blankly at his friend, which made Achilles laugh even
harder. "We are the same size and shape. With these helmets, and wearing
the livery of my ship, no one will be able to tell us apart."
"A game?"
Achilles shrugged, gently placed one of the helmets on Patroclus' head. He
leaned forward quickly and kissed his friend on the lips, then closed the
helmet's faceplate, hiding his friend's face entirely except for his eyes
and mouth.
"A game of sorts, I suppose, to match Agamemnon's own." Achilles put on
his own helmet, closed the faceplate. "We are, behind these disguises,
nothing but shadows of ourselves, and as shadows at the Over-captain's
masque, who knows what secrets we will learn?"
"Secrets?"
"I have heard rumours that Agamemnon has invited a surprise guest."
"A surprise guest?"
"A Trojan," Achilles said.


His real name was Bernal, but AlterEgo insisted on calling him Paris.
"Get used to it. Our hosts insist on you adopting the name for this
occasion."
"If they explained why, it would be easier," Bernal complained. Strapped
into the gravity couch of the small ship in which he was travelling, he
had little to do except complain. AlterEgo took care of all the ship's
functions; Bernal was nothing but baggage.
"Presumably, it has something to do with the fact that all the messages
we've received from our visitors come in the name of Agamemnon."
"Over-captain of the Achaean fleet, for pity's sake."
"You can snort all you want, Paris, but we know very little else about
them, and it will probably be in your best interests to take them
seriously."
"Not to mention the best interests of the whole of Cirrus."
Bernal aligned the external telescope, the only instrument the ship
carried that used visible light and installed specifically for Bernal's
use. He could not see his planet-now more than forty billion kilometres
away-but the system's yellow dwarf sun, Anatole, was the brightest object
in the sky, and Cirrus was somewhere within a few arc seconds of it.
"Homesick?" AlterEgo asked.
"Scared, more like," Bernal answered. "When was the last time one of my
people travelled this far from home?"
Bernal was sure he heard AlterEgo's brain hum, even though he knew the AI
didn't have any parts that hummed as such. He had been in the AI's company
for too long. "Two hundred and twenty-seven years ago. Explorer and miner
named Groenig. Last message came when her ship was forty-three billion
kilometres from home. Never heard from since."
"No one went after her?"