"Jack Williamson - Brother to Demons, Brother to Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

The boy studied her solemnly.
"I'm Davey," he said at last. "Davey Dunahoo."
"But I have no name." The girl came panting back to his side, lugging the limp body of the
dog, which seemed heavier than she. "They call meтАФ" In the reek of the charred brown fur, she
sneezed twice. "They call me Buglet."
"Don't you have parents?"
"I never had a father." Davey stopped to consider her again. "My mother was a girl at La
China's. A drunk man stabbed her." Gravely, he nodded at the girl. "Spot found Buglet lying in
the weeds beyond the dump. She was sick. She can't remember who she is."
"Where do you live?"
"Nowhere." He shrugged. "Anywhere."
"In the street," the girl piped. "When it rains, El Yaqui lets us sleep in his barn. Sometimes he
finds a bone for Spot."
"Mercy, Your Divinity." The halfgod came striding around the mumen. "The reception is
waiting for us." He glowered at the muddy urchins. "I've warned you off the road."
"You can kill dogs." The boy stared back. "But -you can't kill the MultimanтАФ"
"Blasphemy!" the halfgod roared. "Belthar will put a stop to thatтАФ"
.The goddess raised a shining hand.
"Multiman?" She turned to frown at Quelf. "Who is Multiman?"
"A wicked heresy. Forbidden by the Thearchy, but still current among these stupid premen."
He grinned at the defiant children. "I believe their removal will put an end to it."
She floated back to the children.
"Please forgive us." She settled toward them, smiling. "I do want to help you. Won't you tell
me what you need?"
The boy stared blankly, but the girl crept forward with the dog in her arms.
"If you're a goddess, please make Spot alive again."
"I can't do that." She gave Quelf a quick wry glance. "Not even Belthar could reanimate your
pet."
"The Multiman could," the boy insisted. "If he had come."
He took the dog from Buglet's arms. Silently he turned, to wade back across the ditch to the
mud-walled alley. Buglet splashed after him. The goddess glided back to her chair, and the
procession marched on again through the sharp sewer reek.
 A few sun-browned children in blue-and-white uniforms watched from the schoolyard. At one
corner a withered woman sat on a leaner donkey, waiting impassively. At El Yaqui's trading post
a dozen men looked up from the drinks and the games on their sidewalk tables, and a plump dark
girl in a bright red wrapper leaned from a second-floor window to stare at the passing goddess.
At the end of the carpet strip, on the clean green lawn beneath the white marble steps of the
agency, the preman leaders and the truman agent waited, robed in official white. Bowing to the
chair, the agent humbly begged the favor of the goddess. The premen were eager to entertain
their sacred guest in the agency garden.
Zhondra left her chair and levitated after him to inspect the display of preman arts and crafts.
A dark silent youth stood sweating beside a plow, the garden wall behind him hung with sample
plants of cotton, corn, beans and hemp. A one-legged smith bent over his anvil and forge, shaping
hot metal, preparing to shoe a mule. Two shy girls in clean white gowns showed a relief map of
the whole reservation, its red buttes and canyons modeled in clay. A row of silent matrons
offered tacos and hamburgers and rice balls, with mescal and beer and tea.
The goddess tasted politely. When she asked to make the premen a gift, the agent called for El
Yaqui. A lean grave man with brooding eyes and a far-off smile, he accepted the casket of gems
with a silent bow that seemed indifferent.
"Your Divinity, these are the premen." Following the goddess back to her chair, Quelf spoke