"Elgin,.Suzette.Haden.-.Star.Anchored.Star.Angered" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

"And Citizen Jones is to do what?"
The Fish smiled. "Ah," he said with great satisfaction, "Citizen Jones is immune to her little tricks! As you noticed, he is mind-deaf, and he will have no difficulty exposing Drussa Silver for the fraud she is. Others will see showers of roses; Coyote Jones won't. It is that simple."
The Dean stared down at her hands and said nothing, and The Fish, who remembered her very well, considered this an alarming sign. Any moment, for example, she might well ask him why on earth, if Coyote Jones was suited for this mission only because he was mind-deaf, he was a TGIS man at all. Or she might remember the curious juxtaposition of Coyote and the Galoralon revolution, and demand an explanation for that. At which point he would have to lie, and lie convincingly enough to fool Shandalynne O'Halloran. It was not a prospect that appealed to him. It struck him as a good moment to send for liquid refreshments, and he did that, including the code words that meant do-it-faster-than-it-is-possible-to-do-it-or-else.
When the Dean did speak, however, she did not raise the questions he had anticipated. Instead, she asked a question that made him wonder if she was getting old.
"What," she asked him, "if Drussa Silver is not a fraud?"
That was an easy one. Or a trick. He was not sure which.
"Impossible," he said.
"Why?"
"Either she's a fraud or she's divine," he said flatly. "An avatar, an incarnation of the divine in human form ... and if she's that, I'm Michaelmouse."
"Why again?"
"In the first place, all avatars are male," said The Fish, pouring the drinks. "Please note: Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao-Tzu, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Not a female in the lot. In the second place, divine beings belong in the same spacebucket as the Easter Bunny, the Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Helga Dik, and the supposed benefits of taxation. You know that. I know that. Despite the fact that you are trained in a curious discipline called Religious Science, you know that."
"Alvin—"
"And," he charged on, "if she is genuine—which is impossible, but I'm a tolerant man, and willing to humor an aged and eccentric academician—if, I say, she is genuine, there'll be no problem. Coyote will bring her back, she'll stand trial, she'll be acquitted, we'll send her home first-class by government rocket—unless, of course, she prefers to fly home under her own power through space, breathing the perfume of roses and lilies—and that will be that. End of episode."
"I see," said the Dean.
"You see!" The Fish laughed. "All that explanation, dragged out of me by blackmail—oh yes, it was, Citizen Dean, shameless blackmail—and all you can say is 'I see.' Aren't you satisfied?"
The Dean leaned back, her hands in an attitude of prayer, and tapped her fingertips together lightly, thinking.
"Almost," she said. "Almost."
Ahah! thought The Fish. The Dean had never been one to lose track of the thread of an argument.
"You have been most cooperative," she said.
"Thank you."
"However ... "
"Yes?"
"I would still like to know precisely the connection between your man and the revolution on Galoralon. Three-thousand-some-odd years those swamp nomads have fiddled along without the slightest sign of political feeling, and then suddenly, on the one day, at the one hour, when Coyote Jones lands, wham! bang-o! A total overturn of the government!"
"And I," said The Fish pleasantly, "would like to know precisely how you managed to—divert, as you put it—an agent of this bureau, land him on a swamp planet, and damned near get him arrested and thrown in jail to languish for months as an embarrassment to the Federation and the TGIS."
"Touchй," said the Dean.
"I think so."
Shandalynne O'Halloran stood up and smoothed her rumpled tunic. She tapped the control on her inflatable chair, watched as it shrank docilely to nothing, folded it up neatly, and put it back in her pocket.
"Delighted to have had a chance for this little visit," she said heartily. "You must come and see me some time."
"On Harvard?" said The Fish with horror.
"Certainly, on Harvard. That is where I am to be found."
"I do not travel," said The Fish stiffly. "I do not have time."
"And," said the Dean, "you suffer from space-sickness."
"How," he asked disgustedly, "can you possibly remember that?"
She gave him a significant look and one last smile.
"Deans," she said as she turned to leave, "remember everything."
The door closed soundlessly behind her, and he sat there feeling that he'd gotten off reasonably well, since she had somehow not asked the one really awkward question. He only hoped that that did not mean she already knew its answer.

Shandalynne O'Halloran knew that she was not being very polite. Certainly she was not fulfilling her obligations to this Advanced Student whose turn it was to spend the evening in her company. Since each Student got only one such turn, it was unbecoming of her not to rise to the occasion and Be A Dean, concerned only with the problems of this Student.
Especially this Student, who was one of her favorites. Ai-Myn, she was called, and she was an Angel. Not really, of course; technically speaking she was a Hequelian, a Citizen of the third of the Extreme Moons. But it was not possible to look at the Hequelians, note the height and slender elegance, the extraordinary beauty of their faces, the soft clusters of short golden curls that framed those faces, and not understand why the Terran space captain who first encountered them had said immediately—"Angels!" The vestigial white-feathered wings had done nothing to discourage the perpetuation of the nickname.
"You are thoughtful tonight, Citizen Dean," said the Student. "Your mind is ... devoted to a question."
"No," said the Dean. "Not quite. My mind is devoted, rather, to a puzzle. Perhaps two puzzles."
"And you expect to find the answer in there?"
The Student pointed at the microfiche the Dean had been holding when she came in and had been turning round and round in her hands ever since.
The Dean set the thing down, guiltily. This really was not fair to the Student, to come to her for this one evening in which, according to tradition, she was to have the opportunity to take up her own problems with the Dean, and find that Dean obsessed with something else.
"It is Woman Transcendent," said the Dean. "I had a feeling, somehow, that when I read it ... long ago ... there was something in there that applied to the—the puzzles. But I've been reading it over for hours, and whatever it was that I thought was there, I can't find it."
"Can I help, perhaps?" asked Ai-Myn. "Sometimes another person can find the missing piece because she has not been looking for it with such intensity."
The Dean nodded. "Quite right," she said. "And perhaps you can, if you are willing to do something very trivial."
"Anything at all," said Ai-Myn. "Only ask me."
"Then," said the Dean, "do this for me. Woman Transcendent is a basic text. On every elementary reading list. It is not something with which a Student at your level any longer spends much time. But could you state for me, just to give my own thinking the benefit of yours, the basic principles which Ann Geheygan established with the book?"
This was a very superior Student. She did not hesitate for a moment.