Clayton, Jo / Клейтон, Джо - Собрание сочинений (38 произведений) [1981-2016, epub, ENG]

The thief walked through rolls of milky fog, advancing warily to the base of a wall that rose until the fog swallowed it; his chameleon-web bodysuit mocked the opaline mist until he was a pale shade in the shadows. He touched his belt and a circle of light sprang into being under his feet. Another touch. Like a soap bubble he drifted silently up along the flickering force-fields surfacing the wall with the fog ceiling retreating above his head and closing in again under his feet as he slid silently upward. Muffled sounds, broken and anonymous, slipped past him, too natural and arrhythmic to trigger taut nerves. The wall broke suddenly into a wide plane-surfaced top, but he kept rising until his feet were a handspan above the edge, then he touched the belt again and began drifting sideways, smooth and silent in his milky room of fog … one meter … two … touch the belt … down sliding in a long slow slant toward the unseen ground.… Gliding over the soaked, crumbling earth, feet a handspan from contact, body bent tensely forward … the circle of light flickered, faltered, and the thief’s breath rasped hoarsely. Using the last moments of stability he plunged forward.… The black stone rasped faintly under his toes. For a minute he stood perfectly still, eyes closed, forcing his clamoring body into a more responsive quiet. Stripping the glove from his right hand he pressed a palely glowing ring against the lock sensor and waited for the massive door to slide aside. . . .

AITUATEA SHIFTED the bend in his legs to ease his aching hip, careful as he moved to keep the bales piled under him from squeaking, the bales of raw unwashed fleeces that were a stench in his nostrils but sheltered him from noses and teeth of the patrollers’ rathounds. He raised his head a little and stared at the curls of mist drifting across the calm black water of the bay. A wandering breeze licked at his face, tugged at his slicked-back hair, carried past his ears just enough sound to underline the silence and peace of the night. “This is a bust,” he whispered to the one who stood at his shoulder. “She won’t come.” “The man on the mountain said …” His sister’s voice was the crackling of ice crystals shattering. “Look there.” She pointed past the huddling godons beyond the wharves, their rambling forms lit from behind by torches burning before the all-night winestalls, the joyhouses, the cookshops of the water quarter. The Wounded Moon was rising at last, a broken round of curdled milk behind the spiky roof of the Temple. She swung round an arm colorless and transparent as glass, outlined with shimmers like crystal against black velvet and pointed across the harbor. “And there,” she said. She was all over crystal, even the rags she wore. “Out beyond the Woda-an. A blind ship from Phras, dropping anchor.” . . .