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

"Nonsense," snapped Asodelyr. "She's a nuisance, she's a blight, but destruction? If there's any paranoia about, Citizens, it's—"
"And," went on the Head loftily, sailing right over the top of Asodelyr's outraged complaining, "be prepared to be called back at any moment. We cannot know from one hour to the next what need there may be for action from the Council. All of us must stay close to home, easily reached. If you must supervise your Sectors, do so by comset, not in person. We are at the final stages now; nothing must be allowed to go wrong because of carelessness.''
When they were all gone, in various stages of fuss and bother, the Head turned to Tayn Kellyr and touched her arm.
"We regret at times," he said gently, "the necessity that forced us to pair you off for life with that unpleasant man. If there had been any other way, we would have taken it."
"That's quite all right, Cousin Aaron," said Tayn, smiling. "It has been good for my character, all these years."
"It has made you hard, Tayn."
"Hard times," snapped the lady of Castle Fra, "call for hard persons. We use what comes to hand."
"And your children? What has it done to them?"
She pulled her robes tight around her, and settled the bulky hood about her face.
"The boys are young," she said. "It's too soon to speak for them. But my daughter Deliven ... ah, there is a woman born to rule, Aaron! She is as utterly logical as a computer, and as immune to any emotional appeal. If she were called upon to take over the Sector tomorrow, she would do better than her father."
Aaron Begaye walked with her down through the tunnels cut in the great trunk, to the exit ramp hidden in the hillside against which the tree rose, and watched her leave. She took the flyer from the ramp to the highest level of the giant tree in seven seconds flat, as sure a hand at the flyer controls as she had always been at the controls of government.
It was sad. He could remember her as a girl, an almost plump young girl with immense dark eyes, and brown hair in a cap of short curls around her head. She had been fond of dolls and had refused to give them up until she was almost fourteen years old, as he recalled. He was not quite sure where that girl had hidden herself in the steel-and-whipcord woman who was—he was the first to admit it—truly the Head of the Council of Eight.

Chapter Three
The development of telepathic projection techniques was held back for almost a century by the powerful Grinder Psycho-conglomerate, which dominated all psychological and social sciences until the last of the Orthodox Grinderian Karismatics was assassinated in 2064. Perhaps the most obstructive of all the Grinderian Postulates was the Fourth, which claimed that no human being could be harmed by the thoughts or emotions of any other human being. Humankind is indeed fortunate that this dangerous and seductive movement was at last brought to a halt, although no one can admire the violent act which was the first step toward its downfall.
—Encyclopedia Galactica
Fifth Edition, Vol. IV, p. 1421

For a while it had appeared that the liner Lazyday would never dock on Phoenix-One. Coyote had lost all count of the waiting orbits the ship had been obliged to maintain, and none of the coy placating techniques used by the liner staff had helped his bad temper in the slightest. He took no pleasure in seeing twenty-year-old threedies about intrepid colonists beating back helpless indigenous wildlife. Nor did he feel that heavily watered drinks served in edible mint-flavored tubes, or low-grade marijuana spiked with nutmeg, represented any kind of peak experience. There had been a bearable half-hour when one of the copilots had come to share his seat and tell him hair-raising stories about her early days on the Greyhound Rockets, but that had only made the boredom more painful when she moved on to the next passenger across the aisle.
By the time docking actually took place, he was cross and tired and disgusted. His head ached. His skin itched under the unaccustomed pseudo-tattoos. He was tired of the stares he was getting from the other passengers when they realized that they were sharing their liner with a real live Student. A furious baby had vomited down his back, bringing on a solicitous scrubbing down with ice water and Spotnomore by its embarrassed father.
He no longer saw himself, as the liner finally berthed, as the steely-eyed, red-bearded, muscle-bound secret agent off to do daring derring-do. He just wanted to go home to his daughter and help her water her plants, and maybe buy her a new gaza hound just because he had sworn that two such creatures was his limit.
He stumbled down the landing-ramp, muttering to himself and wondering what shape the next foul-up would take in this so-called mission. For example, there could be a note waiting to tell him that instead of his flyer being sent back from Harvard on automatic, per his instructions, it had mistakenly been tucked in with the cargo for a shipment to one of the Third Galaxy factories. For example, there could—
And then he saw the foul-up, right there before his eyes, and stopped worrying about the other possibilities. It was a vision of ... something. Not loveliness. It stood well over six feet tall, had enough shoulders for two normal people, sported a wasp waist and black hair flowing down its back, and it had great bulging lumps all over it that had been, long ago perhaps, human muscles. And it was clearly waiting for him.
A Jock, bigawd. A fathering Jock. And a Student Jock, at that, which was something he hadn't known existed. It was done up in multicolored stars and pinwheels, and its testicles were a spectacular display all by themselves, what with the feathers, and the Catherine wheels, and the silver-and-gold ruffles ... Coyote went over to the side of the landing ramp, where he was in everybody's way, leaned on the ramp's invisible guard-rails, and stared fixedly off into the distance while the Student waved wildly. Maybe it would go away?
"Citizen," said the robostew at his elbow, "you are holding up the disembarkment of this flight. If you are ill, will you please signal by saying aloud I AM ILL. If you are not ill, will you please move on. Thank you, Citizen."
Coyote glared down at the top of the poor little thing, all dented plastic and burnt-out lights and punched-in speakers, and he just hadn't the heart to give it any more trouble. He moved on down the ramp, determined to charge right past the waving Student and on into the night, and then he changed his mind.
As he would have changed his mind about stopping if a brick wall had suddenly bumped up against his chest. He looked straight at the creature, his eyes level with its massive nose, and sighed.
"Citizen Jones," said the Student, "I have a message for you."
"So I assumed," said Coyote. He was doing Weary Secret Agent Assumes Sardonic Tone With Underling. When tired, he found this sort of capital-letter self-programming one of the better ways of staying on his feet and not disgracing himself.
"A message from Dean O'Halloran, Multiversity Two. She's gone to a lot of trouble to get it to you, Citizen."
"Well?"
"Well, what, Citizen?"
This was a Student? This was a member of the intellectual elite of the universe, selected by years of painstaking observation and batteries of subtle tests? Still crammed flesh-to-flesh with the young man, Coyote did the best he could to look flabbergasted, and the Student—finally—turned red under the stars and spangles and backed off.
"I beg your pardon, Citizen Jones," he said. "I was distracted by all the noise."
Coyote said nothing at all. Weary Secret Agent Signifies Mute Contempt For Underling.
"The message," said the Student, "is that Drussa Silver is not on Freeway at this time and won't be there for several weeks. Dean O'Halloran wanted to be sure you would not waste time going there after her."
Coyote took a deep breath, shoved past the Student to a nearby plastibench, sat down firmly, and said, "Oh, putrescence!" as clearly and vigorously as he could manage in his current state of exhaustion. "Oh, flowering putrescence!" he added for good measure.
"I am sorry," said the Student, sitting down beside him. The plastibench creaked alarmingly, and Coyote braced himself against its imminent collapse.
"What is your major, anyway?" he asked the Jock.
"Music, Citizen."
"Music?"
"Yes, Citizen. I'm a harpist."
"A what?"
The Student looked miserable, and dogged, and said, "Well, I am, you know. I play a harp. I play it very well, I compose for it, I am at the head of my classes."
Coyote was genuinely curious now, and he asked gently, "When did they let you know that you were going to be a Student?"
"Late. Very late."
"I see."
"See here, Citizen Jones, I really am sorry. They tell me you've been going around up there for hours. And it must be rotten to get down here, finally, and find out that your plans are all fouled up."
"It's not your fault," said Coyote grudgingly. "It would have been even worse if I'd gone on from here to Freeway and then found out the Silver wasn't there."
"Your thesis depends on direct observation of Citizen Silver, then?" said the young man, and Coyote nodded gravely.