"David Weber & Linda Evans - Hells Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

"I didn't have anything to do with UTTTA, or any other official part of the Union," she replied. It
seemed evident from her toad and her expression that she really would have preferred to leave it at that,
but after glancing at him consideringly for a second or two, she shrugged.
"You may have heard that magisters can be just a little . . . paranoid about their research." She
smiled briefly, and Jasak managed to turn a laugh into a not particularly convincing cough. "A little
paranoid," in this case, was rather like saying that White Mist Lake was "a little damp."
"Well, all right, maybe it goes a bit further than that," she said with a reluctant grin. But the grin faded
quickly, and she shook her head. "In fact, it goes a lot further than that where Magister Halathyn is
concerned. Especially for something like this. There's no way he was going to let even a whisper about
this project out where the Mythalans might hear about it before he was ready to publish."
Jasak nodded in suddenly sober understanding of his own.
"While I'd never like to suggest that Magister Halathyn doesn't hold you in the highest respect,
Hundred Olderhan," she continued, "the real reason we're out here? It's the farthest away from the
Mythal Falls Academy he could get for his field test. And—"
She paused, looking at him with the sort of measuring, considering look he was unused to receiving.
After a moment, she seemed to reach some inner decision and leaned closer to him, lowering her voice
slightly.
"Actually," she said quietly, "we've done a bit of refining on his original theoretical work, as well. The
sort which requires absolute validation before anyone publishes. I have to admit that I didn't really expect
to be able to test all of the features in a single trip, but take a look at this."
She tapped the unit with her wand, and both waterfalls and the arrow disappeared instantly. A brief
moment passed, and then they lit again . . . but this time, they were noticeably different.
She looked up at Jasak, one eyebrow crooked, and he frowned. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened
and he gave her a very sharp glance indeed.
"Exactly," she said, even more quietly. "Magister Halathyn's original idea was to produce a unit which
would detect the closest portal and home a survey team in on it. But once we got into the theory, we
discovered that we could actually nest the spells."
 "So that—" Jasak indicated the display, "—means there's a second gate out here?"
"If it's working properly. And—"
She tapped the display again. And again. And a fourth time. With each tap, the process repeated,
producing new directional arrows and new distance and strength displays, and Jasak swallowed.
"Is that why Magister Halathyn's been talking in terms of a cluster?" he asked, and she nodded.
"Either the thing's completely screwed up—which is always possible, however little we might want to
admit it—or else there are at least a total of five portals associated with this one." A jerk of her head
indicated the swamp portal. "Or, more precisely, this one is one of at least five associated with this one,"
she amended, bringing up the original display on the strongest and nearest of the other portals.
"You said 'at least,'" Jasak observed intently, and she nodded again.
"We never expected to hit anything like this on our first field test, Sir Jasak, so there are only a total
of six 'slots' in the spellware. In theory, we could nest as many as fifteen or twenty—it just never
occurred to us to do it. I suppose that was partly because the Zholhara Cluster only has six portals, and it
seemed unlikely anyone might find one even bigger."
"Gods," Jasak breathed. He stared at the unit for several seconds, then shook himself. "I'm beginning
to see why you were keeping this whole thing so quiet!"
"I thought you might. Still," her eyes brightened, "as happy as I am with how well it seems to be
performing, I think you may still be missing something about this cluster as compared to Zholhara."
"What?" He moved his gaze from the unit to her face,
"The Zholhara portals are as much as three thousand miles apart. The maximum range on our
detector—assuming we got our sums right—is only about nine hundred miles. In fact, according to the
readouts, the farthest one we've detected is less than six hundred miles from this portal right here."
Jasak sucked in a deep, hard breath. A minimum of five virgin portals, all within a radius of only six