"Jody Lynn Nye - Medecine Show" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nye Jody Lynn)

The finished span showed the red of love and the green of life plentifully interspersed with blacks,
silvers, and purples, ending with red for love and blue for peace. Lani tied off the circle and offered it to
her mother.


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"The story of my life," Shona said, slipping it over her head, "literally from beginning to end. Looks like
I'll die in bed. Now, if you could only assure me I'd die solvent. Which color is for money?"
Alex seized the hanging end and yanked it closer to his face to investigate, pulling Shona's head down
with it.
A hollow groaning rose through the bulkheads around them. At last they felt the disorienting drag of the
ship slowing down into clear space. In the next room Chirwl finished his swim. Shona could hear him
splash out of the tub, shaking the water out of his fur so that it struck the walls in a noisy shower. The
adjoining door slid open, and the ottle lolloped across the floor to clamber up beside the crowd on the
bed. The cat rubbed against him cozily, then turned his head to pretend they didn't know one another.
Saffie slurped her big pink tongue over the ottle's head. Shona smiled. One big happy family. Any
bigger, and the small bed wouldn't hold them. From the intercom in the next room, they could hear the
crew's voices as Gershom gave orders, and echoed the engine noise inside the walls.
"All clear," Shona heard Gershom say. At once, she kicked on the comm unit and booted up. The
software program searched out the nearest line-of-sight beacon to the Sibyl's location. They must have
come out of warp almost on top of one, for there was an instantaneous response.
"Hurray!" she cheered. "Civilization at last."
The small screen filled with the Galactic logo, then swirled into blackness, waiting for her to enter an
access code. Shona hit the Answerback button on the top left of the keyboard. A new logo spun forward.
"One Moment Please."
Alex bounced up and down happily.
"Look, Mama!"
"Yup, I see it." With her baby cuddled on her lap, and Lani's head on her shoulder, Shona felt absolute
contentment as she watched her new number scroll up the screen. For security's sake the code had been
changed again, so she had written it into her communication program instead of memorizing it.
"This may take a while," she said, stroking the girl's silky black hair. Lani had grown so much. In no
time she would be taller than Shona, who wasn't very tall. Funny how it had worked out that though she
was their foster child, Lani looked enough like Gershom with her dark, solemn eyes and small, folded
mouth that people automatically thought she'd been born into the family. Alexander had Shona's fairer
coloring, with light brown eyes and hair, and a plump, pink mouth. If the poor child ever encountered
real sunlight under atmosphere, he'd probably freckle like she did. He was a cheerful, loving baby who
seemed to have inherited his mother's native optimism.


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Chirwl, on the other side of the bed, perused the menu that appeared next on the screen. The comm unit
was the only piece of mechanical or electronic equipment, besides the food preparation devices, that he
really liked. Ottles were anti-machinery, or rather non-machinery-oriented. Their culture was based on
barter and philosophy, and there was nothing they needed that they couldn't make. As one of the students