"Zach Hughes - The Book of Rack the Healer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

every Far Seer have at least one Keeper? Not solely for the purpose of
storing information in the blank portion of the Keeper's mind. No. Rack,
like all Healers, spied like a curious child, and often saw the Far Seers lost
in their own pleasure, using the bodies of the Keepers. It was a pleasure
alien to the nature of a Healer, of course, and it was indulged in with an
amusing regularity.

To a Healer, curiosity was the source of pleasure, and as he matured,
Rack discovered that he was never reprimanded when he did his duty and
saved the titillation of his curiosity for his free time. He reasoned that he
was as much entitled to his pleasure as Red Earth was to his. During his
free periods he filled his mind with the dim legends of the Old Ones and
engaged in what the Far Seers looked on as Healer weakness, rambling on
his long, mobile legs over the wide, empty space of the area. His ability to
heal the damage he suffered from the hard projectiles and the toxic gases
gave him mobility. His curiosity and his wanderlust sent him to the thin
frost of the far north, to the steamy heat of the middle regions, to the
waters of the west. He scaled mountains on the way, crossed a great river
and climbed the broken face of the rift to the west of the river. In a box
made of the Material, were the treasured results of his travels: two
hard-material nuggets, one the size of his thumb ball, the other tiny,
almost invisible. The large one was heavy in his palm, and irregularly
shaped. It could be scratched with a sharp, extra hard piece of the
Material and it held an endless fascination for Rack. The smaller nugget
was fast being eaten away, for even in the protective atmosphere of the
establishment it accumulated brown waste on itself from time to time
and, when cleaned, became smaller and smaller.

But Red Earth was mistaken in thinking that Rack was merely
interested in accumulating the hard-material nuggets because they
possessed a certain rarity. To Rack the nuggets did not represent riches,
as they did to citizens of the eastern lands. The nuggets held a dark
mystery for him.

Rack was constantly frustrated in his pursuit of knowledge regarding
the Old Ones. He avidly sought out the dim, old legends, retained for their
aesthetic values. To the Far Seers these legends were a part of the culture,
saved for the picturesque beauty of the thoughts of the first Healers. Some
of the most beautiful were the thoughts of Rose the Healer, preserved from
deep antiquity. Ah, Rack sighed, how they rang, coming from the peaceful,
childlike mind of an aging Keeper in the steamy land beside the southern
sea:

And when the sun flared up,searing the Old Ones, vast clouds of smoke
and particles covered the sky.
And the Old Ones died, fornicating even in death, to give birth to the
New Ones who had scales.

"Negative, negative," sent his teachers.