Payback

Начало книги

He came to me, desperation twisting pale features on his young face, seeking from me a key.

That was not unusual, though it seemed to me that it had been a while since the last one had come to ask. How long I did not know, and did not try to remember.

I floated a half-turn in my chair and reached into the store of keys behind me, which even to my eyes flickered in and out of the universes in which I was planted. I pulled out one of many red, soft-skin boxes, and handed it to him.

The light that I produce on what passes for my skin flooded his skin and his light blond hair, making his paleness look ice-white. His pastel eyes glittered. In that moment, he looked for all the universe like the proverbial frozen child.

After a quick, doubting look at me, he opened the box. Inside was the key: a flat piece of crystal containing documentation and diagrams and directions. On it was all the technology he would need to address his people’s particular problem.

Читать дальше →