"Janat Kagan - Hellspark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kagan Janet)

second because they were clumsy enough to make sealing the hood difficult.
As Megeve double-checked the seams for him, swift-Kalat found himself wondering how much good
Oloitokitok’s 2nd skin might be doing him. Even a carefully sealed 2nd skin was no proof against electric
shock—and shock was Lassti’s major hazard.
“Sealed,” Megeve pronounced.
Swift-Kalat thanked him and slid the few feet to the ground, buffeted at a slight slant by the
daisy-clipper’s ground effect. Around his ankles, flashgrass whipped violently to and fro. Like so many of
Lassti’s plants, it tapped energy from motion piezoelectrically, discharging any excess as alternating
flickers of vivid green and white light. Swift-Kalat paused a moment to tune his hood, shielding his eyes
from the ever-increasing dazzle the oncoming storm winds raised within the flashwood, and then plunged
into its riot of light.
He pushed through a stand of solemnly chiding tick-ticks, thinking as he did so that it was too bad the
2nd skins MGE supplied its employees weren’t sophisticated enough to damp his other senses to this
world as well. Squat hilarities cackled, competing noisily with the tick-ticks for the attention of a swarm
of vikries, Lassti’s version of the bumblebee.
Some hundred yards in, he reached the clearing where he had erected his blind. Here,
flames-of-Veschke and penny-Jannisett unfurled their deep red and copper leaves. Both species used the
more conventional method of photosynthesis, and against the storm-brought brilliance of the background,
they looked almost black—and deeply restful. He breathed a sigh of relief at the quiet.
And then stopped in his tracks. The clearing should not have been so still, even in the absence of
thunder or roar of rain.
The first time the survey team had stepped into this clearing, those small, golden-furred creatures had
shrieked out. Oloitokitok had shrieked back at them, startling everyone as much as the creatures
themselves had. Laughing, but defiant, Oloitokitok had explained that in his tongue they seemed to be
saying, “I don’t believe it! Not for a minute!”
“I couldn’t let it pass without comment,” he had added. “I had to tell them to believe it.”
On each subsequent visit swift-Kalat had paid to the blind, no matter what precautions he had taken,
the flock of golden scoffers—for so they’d become in the surveyors’ common tongue—had shrieked out
their incredulity at his presence.
Now, there was no flash and beat of wings, no scornful shrilling. The only sound was the distant
chiding and cackling of plants.
In the uncanny stillness, a sudden whiplike crack against his ankle made swift-Kalat start. He looked
down to find he had brushed against a small blue-striped zap-me. The zap-me fed on electricity and
obtained it by startling small animals that used a charge for defense. Swift-Kalat did not respond in the
desired manner: he gave no shocks. As he watched, the plant patiently reset its whip-tendril to await a
creature that would.
Something gold lay at the base of the zap-me; swift-Kalat knelt for a closer look.
It was a golden scoffer. Its bright fur was unmarked, but it was dead. Three more were scattered a
few feet beyond. All dead,
A flicker of motion partially hidden behind his blind caught his eye. For one brief moment, hope rose
to sting his eyes. Here? Oloitokitok here? But before he could shout a query, he saw a flash of scarlet,
and a different hope stifled any sound from his throat.
A sprookje!
Swift-Kalat forgot the golden scoffers, forgot the oncoming storm. A crested sprookje! Afraid to
disturb it by rising, he moved only his head, craning awkwardly for a better look.
It was humanoid, but neither parody nor deformation of human. It was instead exotically beautiful:
tall, slender, and deceptively fragile. Like its fellows at base camp, it was covered with short feathers,
subtly patterned in shades of brown. (After dark or in dim light of an overcast, swift-Kalat knew, the
feathers would emit a ghostly light.)
This sprookje, however, was a type that the survey team had not seen since their first contact with