"George R. R. Martin - The Stone City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

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The skeletons were imbedded in the wall.

They were mounted above the windwall gates in no particular pattern, one short of a dozen, half sunk in
the seamless ullish metal and half exposed to the crossworlds wind. Some were in deeper than others.
High up, the new skeleton of some nameless winged being rattled in the breeze, a loose bag of hollow
fairy bones welded to the wall only at wrists and ankles. Yet lower, up and to the right a little from the
doorway, the yellow barrel-stave ribs of a Linkellar were all that could be seen of the creature.

MacDonald's skeleton was half in, half out. Most of the limbs were sunk deep in the metal, but the
fingertips dangled out (one hand still holding a laser), and the feet, and the torso was open to the air.
And the skull, of course—bleached white, half crushed, but still a rebuke. It looked down at Holt every
dawn as he passed through the portal below. Sometimes, in the curious half-light of an early crossworlds
morning, it seemed as though the missing eyes followed him on his long walk toward the gate.

But that had not bothered Holt for months. It had been different right after they had taken MacDonald,
and his rotting body had suddenly appeared on the windwall, half joined to the metal. Holt could smell
the stench then, and the corpse had been too recognizably Mac. Now it was just a skeleton, and that
made it easier for Holt to forget.

On that anniversary morning, the day that marked the end of the first full standard year since the
Pegasus had set down, Holt passed below the skeletons with hardly an upward glance.

Inside, as always, the corridor stood deserted. It curved away in both directions, white, dusty, very
vacant; thin blue doors stood at regular intervals, but all of them were closed.

Holt turned to the right and tried the first door, pressing his palm to the entry plate. Nothing; the office
was locked. He tried the next, with the same result. And then the next. Holt was methodical. He had to
be. Each day only one office was open, and each day it was a different one.

The seventh door slid open at his touch.

Behind a curving metal desk a single Dan'la sat, looking out of place. The room, the furniture, the field—
everything had been built to the proportions of the long-departed ul-nayileith, and the Dan'la was
entirely too small for its setting. But Holt had gotten used to it. He had come every day for a year now,
and every day a single Dan'la sat behind a desk. He had no idea whether it was the same one changing

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offices daily, or a different one each day. All of them had long snouts and darting eyes and bristling
reddish fur. The humans called them foxmen. With rare exceptions, Holt could not tell one from the
other. The Dan'lai would not help him. They refused to give names, and the creature behind the desk
sometimes recognized him, often did not. Holt had long since given up the game, and resigned himself
to treating every Dan'la as a stranger.

This morning, though, the foxman knew him at once. “Ah,” he said as Holt entered. “A berth for you?”