"Walter Jon Williams - The Green Leopard Plague" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

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The Green Leopard Plague by Walter Jon Williams




Kicking her legs out over the ocean, the lonely mermaid gazed at the horizon from her perch in the
overhanging banyan tree.

The air was absolutely still and filled with the scent of night flowers. Large fruit bats flew
purposefully over the sea, heading for their daytime rest. Somewhere a white cockatoo gave a
penetrating squawk. A starling made a brief flutter out to sea, then came back again. The rising
sun threw up red-gold sparkles from the wavetops and brought a brilliance to the tropical growth
that crowned the many islands spread out on the horizon.

The mermaid decided it was time for breakfast. She slipped from her hanging canvas chair and
walked out along one of the banyanтАЩs great limbs. The branch swayed lightly under her weight, and
her bare feet found sure traction on the rough bark. She looked down to see the deep blue of the
channel, distinct from the turquoise of the shallows atop the reefs.

She raised her arms, poised briefly on the limb, the ruddy light of the sun glowing bronze on her
bare skin, and then pushed off and dove head-first into the Philippine Sea. She landed with a cool
impact and a rush of bubbles.

Her wings unfolded, and she flew away.

***

After her hunt, the mermaidтАУher name was MichelleтАУcached her fishing gear in a pile of dead coral
above the reef, and then ghosted easily over the sea grass with the rippled sunlight casting
patterns on her wings. When she could look up to see the colossal, twisted tangle that was the
roots of her banyan tree, she lifted her head from the water and gulped her first breath of air.

The Rock Islands were made of soft limestone coral, and tide and chemical action had eaten away
the limestone at sea level, undercutting the stone above. Some of the smaller islands looked like
mushrooms, pointed green pinnacles balanced atop thin stems. MichelleтАЩs island was larger and
irregularly shaped, but it still had steep limestone walls undercut six meters by the tide, with
no obvious way for a person to clamber from the sea to the land. Her banyan perched on the saucer-
edge of the island, itself undercut by the sea.

Michelle had arranged a rope elevator from her nest in the tree, just a loop on the end of a long
nylon line. She tucked her wings awayтАУthey were harder to retract than to deploy, and the gills on
the undersides were delicateтАУand then slipped her feet through the loop. At her verbal command, a
hoist mechanism lifted her in silence from the sea to her resting place in the bright green-
dappled forest canopy.

She had been an ape once, a siamang, and she felt perfectly at home in the treetops.

During her excursion, she had speared a yellowlip emperor, and this she carried with her in a mesh