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

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own name. "And what then? Bardo will be to blame if anything happens to
you."

I tightened the laces of my skates. I said, "I want to make friends with
my uncle, if I can, and I want to see what he looks like."

"Who cares what he looks like?"

"I do. You know I do."

"You can't be his son, I've told you that a hundred times. You were born
four years after he left Neverness."

It was said that I looked enough like the Lord Pilot to be mistaken for
his brother-or son.

All my life I had endured the slander. My mother, so the gossips
prattled, had long ago fallen in love with the great Soli. When he had
spurned her in favor of my Aunt Justine-this is the lie they tell-she
had searched the back streets of the Farsider's Quarter for a man, any
man, who looked enough like him to father her son. To father me. Mallory
the Bastard-so the novices at Borja had whispered behind my back, and
some of them, the bolder few, to my face. At least they had until the
Timekeeper taught me the ancient arts of wrestling and boxing. "So what
if you do look like him? You're his nephew."

"His nephew by marriage."

I did not want to look like the famous, arrogant Lord Pilot. I hated
that the signature of his chromosomes was seemingly written upon my own.

Bad enough to be his nephew. My great fear, as Bardo knew, was that Soli
had returned in secret to Neverness and had used my mother for his own
selfish purposes or ... I did not like to think of other possibilities.

"Aren't you curious?" I asked. "The Lord Pilot returns from the longest
journey in the three thousand years of our Order, and you aren't even
curious to know what he's discovered?"

"No, I'm not afflicted with curiosity, thank God."

"It's said that the Timekeeper will call the quest at the convocation.
Don't you even want to know?"

"If there's a quest," he said, "we'll probably all die."