"Robert F. Young - Tents of Kedar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

 "You will be amply repaid," the woman called up again when Eastcliff made no answer. "And I will
not be in your way."
She spoke English excellently. Many bush-blacks found the language unconquerable. She had high,
wide cheekbones, and their width was emphasized by the thinness of her cheeks. Her complexion was so
utterly clear that the blue-blackness of her skin appeared translucent.
"I have no accommodations for a passenger," Eastcliff said.
"I will gladly sleep on the deck."
He sighed. The prospect of having his privacy invaded by a bush-black female dismayed him. But he
couldn't risk offending a manifestly respected member of the race that supplied the laborers and the
menials without which the Eastcliff Empire would languish and die. "Very well," he said at last. "You may
come on board."
She tossed up her crimson satchel and he caught it and set it on the deck. Then, hiding his revulsion
to the best of his ability, he reached down, gave her his hand and helped her climb over the rail. "Thank
you," she said, straightening her half-skirt. "My name is Sefira."
The driuh dropped swiftly behind, turned and headed back toward the promontory. Eastcliff did not
bother to divulge his own name; she undoubtedly knew it anyway. Carrying her satchel, he led the way
below deck to the single cabin and set the satchel on the bunk. "You can sleep here. I have a
comfortable deckchair that unfolds into a bed, and I much prefer to sleep in the open in any case."
The tone of his voice forbade argument. That, and the almost tangible aura of authority that covered
him like a mantle. It was the famous Eastcliff authority, compounded of arrogance, opportunism and
irresistibility, that had minted the seemingly worthless wilderness that the more favored a Andromedae VI
colonials had spurned, and had given the planet its name.
He got blankets from the inbuilt bureau (the river nights were chilly), tossed two of them on the bunk
and slung one over his shoulder. Then, aware of Sefira's gaze upon him, he turned reluctantly and faced
her. He found himself looking into her eyes. They were black, but the blackness was alien to his
experience. It was a four-dimensional blackness тАФ it had to be тАФ and he felt that he was gazing into
infinite space; that although no stars were visible, thousands of them shone brightly just beyond the
periphery of his gaze. But the analogy was unsatisfactory. Space connotated absolute zero тАФ coldness
and indifference. But here before him, commingled with a poignant Weitschmerz and glowing warmly in
the night of his life, were compassion and human kindness of a dimension he had not dreamed existed;
and here before him, too, half hidden in the deep darkness, was something else тАФ a quality he knew
well, yet could not recognize.
As he stood there staring into her eyes, deja vu smote him again, with such force this time that he
nearly staggered. And suddenly he understood its cause: this woman тАФ this blacker-than-black
Ebononese from the bush, with her grotesque clothes and her primitive perfume, reminded him of his
dead wife. It was impossible; it was execrable. But it was true.
Angrily he turned away. "Good night," he said. Then, remembering the thinness of her face: тАЬThe
galley's next door if you're hungry."
"Thank you. I will have coffee ready when you awake."

***

Every night when Eastcliff fell asleep it was like dying, because the odds were even that he would
never awake. But he was used to dying; he had been dying now for weeks; and if it bothered him more
than usual as he lay on the unfolded deckchair beneath the stars, it was because the clinic was so close.
Because during his journey upstream he had weighed the skepticism with which the colonials regarded
the curative powers of the chirurgeons and found it to be a product of apartheid and rumor rather than of
fact. Because, through the persistent mists of his own skepticism, he perceived the possibility that these
revered female witch doctors of the bush, these black Isoldes with their magic potions, might be able to
accomplish that which orthodox medicine could not.