"Anthony, Piers - Adept - 01 - Split Infinity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

A tall youth intercepted the woman. "Game, lass?"
How easy he made it seeml

She dismissed him with a curt downward flip of one
hand and continued on toward Stile. A child signaled
her: "Game, miss?" The woman smiled, but again
negated, more gently. Stile smiled too, privately; evi-
dently she did not recognize the child, but he did: Pol-
lum. Rung Two on the Nines ladder. Not in Stile's own
class, yet, but nevertheless a formidable player. Had the
woman accepted the challenge, she would probably
have been tromped.

There was no doubt she recognized Stile, though. His
eyes continued to review the crowd, but his attention
was on the woman. She was of average height—several
centimeters taller than he—but of more than average
proportions. Her breasts were full and perfect, unsag-
ging, shifting eloquently with her easy motion, and her
legs were long and smooth. In other realms men as-
sumed that the ideal woman was a naked one, but often
this was not the case; too many women suffered in the
absence of mechanical supports for portions of their
anatomy. This one, approaching him, was the type who
really could survive the absence of clothing without loss
of form.

She arrived at last. "Stile," she murmured.

He turned as if surprised, nodding. Her face was so
lovely it startled him. Her eyes were large and green,
her hair light brown and light-bleached in strands that
expanded about her neck. There was a lot of art in the
supposedly natural falling of women's hair. Her fea-
tures were even and possessed the particular properties
and proportions that appealed to him, though he could
not define precisely what these were. His shyness
2

loomed up inside him, so that he did not trust himself
to speak.

"I am Sheen," she said. "I would like to challenge
you to a Game."

She could not be a top player. Stile knew every rank-
ing player on every age-ladder by sight and style, and
she was on no ladder. Therefore she was a dilettante,
an occasional participant, possibly of some skill in se-