"Alexander Kazantsev. The Destruction of Faena (ГИБЕЛЬ ФАЭНЫ, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

best safeguard the life of the great Elder, but no one said anything about
it to him.
Um Sat threw his hands apart. He must submit to the general decision.
He had now received the right to act. When Ave returned, Um Sat called the
Dictator's secretary over the closed TV. The screen lit up and the slits of
the secretary box glittered on it.
"Dictator Jupi, most illustrious of the illustrious, consents to
receive the honorary longface Um Sat and is sending an escort for him,"
announced the box, which had been programmed to speak in the old style. The
screen went blank.
"What?" whispered Ave Mar. "Go into the Lair? Doesn't this mean that
Yar Jupi wants to take a hostage?"
The Elder smiled sadly.
"The risk is not so great."
An officer of the Blood Guard soon appeared in the cell. Ave's blood
froze. Before him stood the living Yar Alt.
The caller bowed to the Elder, glanced casually at Ave and said
pompously:
"The greatest of the great, the Dictator Yar Jupi, gave you the right,
honorary long-face, to enter his presence. I have been sent to escort you to
the palace."
Ave Mar had the impression that even the Blood Guard officer's voice
was the same as Alt's. Had he really come back from the dead? Perhaps the
paralysis caused by the bullet had only been temporary. But why didn't he
rush at Ave the way he had done in Mada's room?
The officer of the Blood Guard merely glanced indifferently again at
Ave Mar and bowed to him.
"In the name of the most illustrious Dictator, I bear apologies to the
honoured guest."
As soon as the officer of the Blood Guard and Um Sat had gone out, Ave
Mar rushed to the door of the cell. To his amazement, it was unlocked. Only
then did Ave Mar realise that the officer's face had been innocent of a
scar.


Dictator Yar Jupi was waiting impatiently for Um Sat Omnipotent by
grace of the Blood Council, capable in favour of the proprietors of sending
millions of Faetians to their death and ready to unleash a disintegration
war at any moment, he was powerless to safeguard the one life that was the
most dear to him.
Yar Jupi was a complicated person. He understood extremely well whom he
was serving and how. After losing his wife in his time, he had come to hate
the roundheads from whom she had contracted a fatal disease while nursing
them. This hatred had finally found expression in a barefaced doctrine which
it was impossible to believe, but which proved convenient to the proprietors
from the Blood Council. Now, at the height of power, when he was ostensibly
leading the life of an ascetic in voluntary seclusion, love for his daughter
had become the only ray of light to Yar Jupi. Everything else was darkness:
fear for his own life, terror of a war which he was nevertheless preparing
himself, terror also of the toilers and of his own masters who were ready to