Herotica 1. Kerry Greenwood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ they were afire. Neither had been allotted a partner, so they had not participated in the State Sanctioned Joining once a month of the married Atlanteans. The coupling of men with men was punishable by death, as pollutants in the carefully balanced gene pool. They had no guide but desire. They fumbled, stroked, grabbed, and sighed, and at one point Gnathos could feel the amusement of both cats, colouring the roaring red fog in his head that made him try to get closer, closer!

      Later they lay in a puddle of garments, sticky and exhausted, and Andros stretched out a hand to see if he was, actually, glowing. Both he and his lover were.

      They reached the cave high in the Ebruz Mountains a day before the Great Wave. It was comfortable. Gnathos had visited it before. It was more of a cache than a home, but the cats appreciated the sanitary facilities and the small planetary motion generator kept the cave toasty warm. The grav-sled slid into its prepared place and dropped into re-charge.

      They spent the whole day eating, sleeping, and learning how to make love. Gnathos had bought a small pipe from a fisherman, and they both tried to compose tunes.

      In the middle of the second night, Andros saw a strange light, and woke the others. Together, men and cats sat and watched the red flame scorching the clouds, the bombs of pumice exploding in the air, all so far away as to make the destruction of the city no taller than a candle flame.

      Then they went back to sleep. Because the water would be coming soon. They heard it first as a rumble in the ground, which disturbed the cats. Basht and her mate washed furiously, trying to block out the subsonics, until each cat came to a human and compelled them to put their hands over their sensitive ears.

      Then there was a crash which shook the mountains end to end and sounded like the end of the planet.

      ‘The Nile must be at full,’ commented Gnathos, stroking Andros and Basht at the same time. ‘Outgoing tide crashing into incoming Great Wave. The water’s already moving up. By morning we’ll be in the midst of an ocean.’

      ‘It will go down again?’ asked Andros.

      ‘Yes, of course, in most places. This is all our fault, you know. The stadia covered in salt water that will not bear next year. The drowned people and animals. We were careless of their lives.’

      ‘You aren’t,’ said Andros, kissing him on the hand. ‘You rescued the cats.’

      ‘Yes, there’s that. The Ephors would have killed them,’ admitted Gnathos.

      ‘All right then. We no longer belong to those people, but to the humans,’ said Andros. ‘And what will become of us? Humans are short lived, prone to disease and wars.’

      We will live long lives, together, my... my love, as will the cats, and we will just have to find a kingdom that doesn’t engage in unsafe behaviour,’ replied Gnathos. ‘I have just the place in mind, Stable government, polytheic, civilized. Also they are very musical.’

      ‘And you will stay with me?’ asked Andros.

      ‘Of course. Always. And with the cats.’

      They kissed again until Basht interrupted.

      ‘You not only rescued us from death, but you said you would take us to a land where our kittens would be worshipped as gods,’ Basht reminded Gnathos.

      ‘That’s true, we will go there just as soon as the water goes down. I have a lovely place in mind for the City of Cats.’

      ‘Come and lie down with me,’ suggested Andros, embracing his lover and drawing him down on the second best bed cover. ‘Now we are humans, and we can love, and dance and sing, and maybe we will laugh, as well.’

      Gnathos subsided into his arms with great joy. His lips curved, his mouth opened. He laughed. Andros laughed. And both cats purred.

      ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTE: The city of Bubastis, centre of the worship of the Cat Goddess, Basht, has many mummified cats. Such as have been examined have been DNA tested to belong to a strain of felis sylvestris and felis lybica, a striped cat such as one sees in Egypt even today. No one has ever found the neat, elegant black cats, who were the model for the innumerable statues of the Goddess herself. Striped cats can undergo chinchillization,or melanization, which fades their stripes, but the avatars of the Goddess are all black, unrelieved by any marks. Further investigation at Bubastis may elucidate this puzzle.

      THE LIBRARY ANGEL

      LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA, ROMAN CONQUEST EGYPT B C 30.

      The smoke was already trickling under the closed door. Marcus Tullius Corvinus grabbed the Homeric hymns, which he had been construing, and grappled them to his breast. Whatever the cost, these should not burn, must not burn. The scroll was heavy but he managed to seize a couple of epics as he ran past, seeking the outer gate into the colonnade that gave directly onto the sea.

      The scrolls were inscribed in oak-gall ink. Even if they got soaked, they would not blur. The immortal words would not be lost to the night or war and barbarity, roaring towards scholarship and learning, knowledge and wisdom, with the fires from the burning ships. The library of Alexandria was a great monument and treasure of the world. The Romans probably wouldn’t mean to burn it down. But they wouldn’t overly care if they did.

      Marcus got to the gate and a rush of flame, gusting with the high wind, forced him back. He stumbled into another scholar on the same errand, Egyptian by the look of him, a load of treatises in his arms.

      ‘The wooden fence and landing stage is afire,’ he gasped, ‘and there’s smoke coming under the other door.’

      ‘Windows?’ asked the Egyptian. They scanned the room. There were a few windows, but they were high up, too high for either of them to reach alone.

      ‘Take the scrolls,’ ordered Marcus. ‘I’m Marcus, what’s your name, fellow scholar?’

      ‘Imhotep,’ said the Egyptian. The kohl around his beautiful eyes was running down his face in black tears. ‘What do you intend?’

      ‘I’ll boost you up, you can get out through the window,’ said Marcus. ‘Take the Hymns of Homer with you, they must not be lost.’

      ‘But you’ll die,’ protested the Egyptian. ‘I would not leave you to perish.’

      ‘What scrolls do you have?’ asked Marcus, pulling a table over to the wall and climbing on it.

      ‘Treatise on Surgery, there’s only one, it saves lives,’ said Imhotep. ‘All of it, eight scrolls. That, too, must not be lost.’

      ‘This window faces onto the stone landing stage where the foreign ships come in. If we wrap them in something, make a bag, that ought to work.’ Marcus dragged off his tunic, piled the scrolls into it, and pinned it shut with his fibulae. The brooches kept the cloth close around the precious writing.

      ‘Now, up you go,’ urged Marcus. ‘If you stand on my shoulders, you can reach the opening. Hurry, it’s getting hard to breathe.’

      Imhotep scaled the naked frame of the young Roman, dragged the scrolls to the window and shoved them out. But there was not a chance that he could fit his body through that narrow embrasure. Imhotep half slid, half fell, into the embrace of Marcus Corvinus.

      ‘We СКАЧАТЬ