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

the species nearly three years ago. It was superbly crested in scarlet, and its long, smooth neck rose from
a swirling yoke of red and blue feathers.
It knelt on both knees, over something shiny that was hidden from swift-Kalat’s view by the
art-nouveau tracings of an arabesque vine. Its head dipped rapidly—once, twice, three times—but
swift-Kalat was unable to see what it was doing.
At last the sprookje stood and turned to face him. Enormous golden eyes stared at swift-Kalat from
the sharp-featured, scarlet face. It opened its beaklike mouth as if to speak, but made no sound. Its
tongue glowed an ominous red. Then, feathers ruffling, it backed slowly away and vanished into the
flashwood.
Swift-Kalat realized that he had been holding his breath. He exhaled with a sigh and rose, just as a
rattle of thunder recalled the need for haste.
Cautiously, he pushed through the heavy underbrush to see what had so interested the sprookje. A
large object with the sheen of plastic lay beside his blind, reflecting bloody red the flames-of-Veschke it
lay among. Scattered around it were a dozen more dead golden scoffers. For a long moment, his mind
fought identification of the object.
He closed his eyes. The golden scoffers were scavengers. When swift-Kalat opened his eyes once
again, he saw that Oloitokitok was dead. In death, Oloitokitok had silenced the scoffers once and for all.
Megeve and swift-Kalat found Oloitokitok’s daisy-clipper on the far side of the stand of lightning
rods. They lifted the remains of his body into it and Megeve switched the hovercraft to follow mode.
This bitter parody of a funeral cortege—the only rites Oloitokitok would have until the cause of his death
had been ascertained—arrived at base camp on the edge of the breaking storm.
Torrents of rain dimmed even the field of flashgrass. It distorted into unrecognizability the tiny crowd
of surveyors who huddled grimly at the main gate. Only layli-layli calulan seemed sharp-edged, in
focus, as she came forward to take charge of the body.
No one could find the words to speak to her. A moment later, the crowd disbanded in total silence.
Swift-Kalat sat in the grounded daisy-clipper and watched them all go.
Wearily, he gathered up his specimen bag and fought through the thick red mud of the compound to
his cabin.
He taped a record of his sprookje-sighting while it was still fresh in his mind; then, unable to sleep, he
took the dead golden scoffers from his specimen bag and spent the next few hours dissecting one. His
exhaustion had at last caught up with him. He put the second small corpse to one side and played back
his report: the voice that issued from the recorder sounded chilled and shaky.
The thunderstorm passed and the rain settled down to a steady drizzle. He fastened the cabin door
open—he wanted company but he was too tired to seek it out—and his sprookje entered. (At least, he
assumed this one was “his”; like Gaian cats, each of the sprookjes in camp seemed to favor a particular
person.) It was not the company he had hoped for but, unlike most of the other surveyors, swift-Kalat
didn’t mind the sprookje. His inability to communicate with it was troublesome; its presence was not.
It shook rainwater from its feathers with a controlled shiver.
Swift-Kalat rubbed his eyes. “Don’t drip on the floor,” he said. As always, he spoke to the sprookje
as if it might understand.
The creature rubbed its own silver-blue eyes and blinked at him. “Don’t drip on the floor,” it said, its
Adam’s apple bobbing; and swift-Kalat was again disturbed to hear the shakiness in his own voice, this
time captured by the sprookje.
It parroted everything he said with the same accuracy and retention as his recorder, and only the
beaklike shape of its mouth made its mimicry imperfect.
Swift-Kalat sighed.
The sprookje did likewise. Then it looked down at the table and saw the golden scoffer. It leaned
over and opened its mouth.
“Hey! Don’t do that!” said swift-Kalat sharply.
The sprookje echoed both his words and his tone and went on as it had intended. Swift-Kalat caught