"Andre Norton - Crosstime 1 - Quest Crosstime" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

in most things, but there were basic differences of emotion, spirit,
intellect; they were individuals, not just two halves of a split whole. The
Limiters was the party behind the growing demand that crosstime travel
be placed under strict control. Supervised and controlled, of course, by
Saur To'Kekrops' proposed committee—which was the same as saying
To'Kekrops and his liege men alone. If there was an incident which could

be used for public report, proving the dangerous quality of crosstime
exploration, the need for rigid supervision; an accident to some member
of the Hundred or to the family of such a member—Marfy sucked in her
breath, went rigid. But To'Kekrops would not dare! And how could he
interfere?
There was no possible entrance into this successor world except right
down there in the midst of camp. And no possible travel vehicle except the
official shuttles. Also, the Project personnel would and did have no
sympathy with the Limiters. Their experiments here would be among the
first to be canceled under such a regimen.
Marva…
The fury of the storm was a battle over and around Marfy's small crack
of safety. She had witnessed by proxy such explosions of nature pictured
on the record tapes in the library of crosstime Headquarters. It had been
four centuries—no, five now—since her people had unlocked the gates of
Vroom's time and had gone, not backward nor forward, but across the
fabric of counted years to visit other successor worlds whose history
followed tracks varying further and further from that of Vroom. For, from
decisions made in history, sometimes even from the death of a single man,
separated worlds split, divided, and re-divided, to make a glittering web of
time roads, some so divergent that those who used them were no longer
wholly human as she and her kind defined human.
And this was one of the oddest of those alternate worlds, one in which
the first cells of life had never come into being at all: water, stone, soil,
wind, rain, sun. But nothing living or growing. Then the Project had
moved in to sow life, or attempt to do so, under controlled conditions. And
the experiment was the pride of one of the great scientific groups electing
twenty of the ruling Hundred. No, Project personnel would do nothing to
jeopardize what they were attempting to accomplish here.
Marva had been restless during the past few days. She liked people. The
thrill of crosstime travel was allied in her with a chance to study other
levels which were not barren deserts. The sisters had made two such trips,
having sworn to obey orders, and both times Marva had been
disappointed at the narrow path they had been constrained to walk. Here
they had been afforded mere freedom, simply because there were no
otherworld natives to whom they could inadvertently reveal themselves.

So— But there was no use in speculating, although Marfy's imagination
continued to supply her with a series of explanations drawn from the few
facts she knew, each perhaps a little more exotic than the one preceding it.
Only one decision for her, once the storm was over: she was going straight
to Kutur. Then she was going to demand what she had been so careful not
to request since they had arrived and had learned that Kutur's compliance