"David Zindell - Neverness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/David%20Zindell%20-%20Neverness.TXT (3 of 369) [12/30/2004 2:15:45 PM] file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/David%20Zindell%20-%20Neverness.TXT own name. "And what then? Bardo will be to blame if anything happens to you." I tightened the laces of my skates. I said, "I want to make friends with my uncle, if I can, and I want to see what he looks like." "Who cares what he looks like?" "I do. You know I do." "You can't be his son, I've told you that a hundred times. You were born four years after he left Neverness." It was said that I looked enough like the Lord Pilot to be mistaken for his brother-or son. All my life I had endured the slander. My mother, so the gossips prattled, had long ago fallen in love with the great Soli. When he had spurned her in favor of my Aunt Justine-this is the lie they tell-she had searched the back streets of the Farsider's Quarter for a man, any man, who looked enough like him to father her son. To father me. Mallory some of them, the bolder few, to my face. At least they had until the Timekeeper taught me the ancient arts of wrestling and boxing. "So what if you do look like him? You're his nephew." "His nephew by marriage." I did not want to look like the famous, arrogant Lord Pilot. I hated that the signature of his chromosomes was seemingly written upon my own. Bad enough to be his nephew. My great fear, as Bardo knew, was that Soli had returned in secret to Neverness and had used my mother for his own selfish purposes or ... I did not like to think of other possibilities. "Aren't you curious?" I asked. "The Lord Pilot returns from the longest journey in the three thousand years of our Order, and you aren't even curious to know what he's discovered?" "No, I'm not afflicted with curiosity, thank God." "It's said that the Timekeeper will call the quest at the convocation. Don't you even want to know?" "If there's a quest," he said, "we'll probably all die." |
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