"David Zindell - Neverness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)

whole of his complicated character and cunning intelligence was
concentrated in his great, bulging forehead and in his deep-set
beautiful eyes. Apart from his eyes, though, he was an ugly man. He had
a coarse black beard and bulbous red nose. His gaudy silk robe spilled
over his mountainous chest, belly and legs, onto the seat of the
immense, padded chair on which he sat, next to the window. On each of
his ten fat fingers he sported a differently colored jeweled ring. He
had been born prince on Summerworld; the rings and the chair were
articles of great value he had imported from his family's estate,
reminders of the riches and glory that could have been his had he not
renounced (or tried to renounce) worldly pleasures for the beauty and
terror of the manifold. As he twined his long mustache between his thumb
and forefinger, his rings clicked together. "Why do you want what you
can't have?" he asked me. "By God, where's your sense?"

"I want to meet my uncle, what's wrong with that?" I said as I pulled on
my black racing kamelaika. "Why must you answer a question with a
question?"

"And why shouldn't I answer a question with a question?"

He sighed and rolled his eyes. He said, "You'd meet him tomorrow. Isn't
that soon enough? We'll take our vows, and then the Lord Pilot will
present us our rings-I hope. We'll be pilots, Mallory, and then we can
do as we damn please. Tonight we should smoke toalache or find a couple
of beautiful whores-a couple apiece, I mean-and spend the night swiving
them until our blood's dry."

Bardo, in his own way, was wilder and more disobedient than I. What we
should have been doing the night before taking our vows was to be
practicing zazen, ballning and fugue, some of the mental disciplines
needed to enter-and survive-the manifold. "Last seventyday," I said, "my
mother invited Soli and Justine to dinner. He didn't have the decency to
answer the invitation. I don't think he wants to meet me."

"And you think to repay his rudeness with greater rudeness? If he wants
to waste away drinking with his friends, well, everyone knows how Lord
Soli likes to drink, and why. Leave him alone, Little Fellow."

I reached for my skates and pushed my feet into them. They were cold and
stiff from lying beneath the drafty window too long. "Are you coming
with me?" I asked. "Am I coming with you? Am I coming with you? What a
question!"

He belched and patted his rumbling belly as he looked out the window. I
thought I saw confusion and indecision rippling in his dark, liquid
eyes. "If Bardo doesn't come with you, you'll go alone, don't tell me
you won't, goddammit!" Like many of the princely caste on Summerworld,
he had the pretentious habit of occasionally speaking of himself by his