"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 09 - Lost Dorsai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

other people reacted to me. With some I found that I became almost invisible; and nearly all seemed to
re-lax their natural impulse to keep private their personal secrets and concerns.

It was almost as if they felt that somehow I was now beyond the point where I would stand in judgment
on their pains and sorrows. No, on second thought, it was something even stronger than that. It was as if
I was like a burnt-out candle in the dark room of their inner selves—a lightless, but safe, companion
whose pres-ence reassured them that their privacy was still un-breached. I doubt very much that
Amanda and those I was to meet on this trip to Gebel Nahar would have talked to me as freely as they
later did, if I had met them back in the days when I had had Else, alive.

We were lucky on our incoming. The Gebel Nahar is more a mountain fortress than a palace or
govern-ment center; and for military reasons Nahar City, near it, has a spaceport capable of handling
deep-space ships. We debarked, expecting to be met in the termi-nal the minute we entered it through its
field doors. But we were not.

The principality of Nahar Colony lies in tropical latitudes on Ceta, and the main lobby of the terminal
was small, but high-ceilinged and airy; its floor and ceiling tiled in bright colors, with plants growing in
planter areas all about; and bright, enormous, heavily-framed paintings on all the walls. We stood in the

middle of all this and foot traffic moved past and around us. No one looked directly at us, although
neither I with my scars, nor Amanda—who bore a re-markable resemblance to those pictures of the first
Amanda in our Dorsai history books—were easy to ig-nore.

I went over to check with the message desk and found nothing there for us. Coming back, I had to hunt
for Amanda, who had stepped away from where I had left her.

“El Man—“ her voice said without warning, behind me. “Look!”

Her tone had warned me, even as I turned. I caught sight of her and the painting she was looking at, all
in the same moment. It was high up on one of the walls; and she stood just below it, gazing up.

Sunlight through the transparent front wall of the terminal flooded her and the picture, alike. She was in
all the natural colors of life—as Else had been—tall, slim, in light blue cloth jacket and short
cream-colored skirt, with white-blond hair and that incredible youthfulness that her namesake ancestor
had also owned. In contrast, the painting was rich in garish pigments, gold leaf and alizarin crimson, the
human figures it depicted caught in exaggerated, melodramatic at-titudes

Leto de muerte, the large brass plate below it read. Hero’s Death-Couch, as the title would roughly
translate from the bastard, archaic Spanish spoken by the Naharese. It showed a great, golden bed set
out on an open plain in the aftermath of the battle. All about were corpses and bandaged officers standing
in gilt-encrusted uniforms. The living surrounded the bed
 and its occupant, the dead Hero, who, powerfully muscled yet emaciated, hideously wounded and
stripped to the waist, lay upon a thick pile of velvet cloaks, jewelled weapons, marvellously-wrought
tapestries and golden utensils, all of which covered the bed.

The body lay on its back, chin pointing at the sky, face gaunt with the agony of death, still firmly holding
by one large hand to its naked chest, the hilt of an oversized and ornate sword, its massive blade
dark-ened with blood. The wounded officers standing about and gazing at the corpse were posed in
dramatic at-titudes. In the foreground, on the earth beside the bed, a single ordinary soldier in battle-torn
uniform, dying, stretched forth one arm in tribute to the dead man.