"Carol Emshwiller - The General" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

wealth with him. He was, after all, at the top of his graduating class. The top! We were surprised that a savage child
had beaten out our own. We took it as a sign we could mold the wild ones to our civilized ways if we caught them in
time. We were glad to have him on our side. Until he defected, we suspected nothing.

I wake with a child looking down on me—so bundled up I wonder how she can move at all. A dirty child but I'm
dirtier. At first I think a boy, but then I think, girl. I see her skirt and coarse hand-knit wooly petticoat hanging below it.
I'm not a good judge of the ages of children, but I'd guess about nine or ten years old. Beside her there's a bundle of
sticks she's been gathering.
I distrust everybody. I wake up in a rage as usual, ready to strike out. I think, Here's one of them, but then she
smiles and I smile back.
I can't help groaning as I try to sit up. I'm always so stiff, waking after a day of climbing. (When I was younger I
never had this problem. I suppose it'll only get worse.) I ask her, "What are you doing way up here this time of year?"
and she asks, "What are you?"
Her name is Loo. I tell her I'm Sang. Not too much of a lie, especially if you take it to mean blood and pronounce it
"sans," and now I am sans everything. (For a long time I was called rubbish.)

It's been three days and we still haven't captured him, therefore sweeping changes from the top on down.
Higher-ups have been brought in. Those in charge are no longer in charge. How can one half-starved man, possibly
wearing orange, and with a microchip, have escaped us all? We have the know-how and the wherewithal.

Loo won't go home without more sticks. I help her. She's all smiles when she sees how much I get. I shoulder a
dead log, too. I think to chop it up when we get . . . wherever. First we climb on the main trail and then turn off on a
smaller path, so small you have to know it's there to follow it.
We come to a hut of stone and weathered wood. It looks like part of the mountain. It's a hut as if out of a painting
of a troll's house in a book of fairy tales. The roof slopes almost to the ground. I remember fairy tales from before I was
taken, otherwise I'd not know about them.
Loo's grandma greets us at the door. I look past her and see it's like a troll's hut inside, too. Heavy handmade
furniture, a worn-down board floor, a squat black stove, a squat black kettle steaming . . .
Loo and her grandma must have gotten marooned up here someway. I don't ask how. The grandma has a hard
time walking from the stove to the doorway. Perhaps she could no longer climb down. Yet to leave her here alone with
just a child for help ... I don't see how they get by. They don't look in good shape.
I don't go in. I stand in the doorway. I say, "I am your enemy. I'm a fugitive. You risk your life if you take me in. I
have a chip imbedded in my shoulder." I tell the grandma about the reward though I don't say how much. I hardly dare.
It's a sum hard to resist. It would make anyone rich for life.
For answer the old woman motions me in, motions me to sit down, motions me to take off my jacket and mittens,
and then hands me a cup of strong strange tea. It tastes of pine needles. They have two rooms. Two nanny goats stay
in with them.
I say, "You don't realize."
The grandma says, "I realize." Her voice is a breathy growl.
She shows me men's clothes hanging behind the door, but she won't talk about them. In fact she'll hardly talk at
all. Just gives me stew full of tiny bones. Then she gets out a paring knife and motions me to lean over the table. I do.
It'll give her a chance to cut my throat if she feels like it.
(I had covered my shoulder first thing with pieces of foil from the dump on the outskirts of town so they couldn't
home in on me.)
Afterward she makes me a different sort of tea for the pain. The way I'm slurping down every odd-tasting thing
she hands me, she could poison me in a minute, and I'll bet she has whatever it takes to do it.
She wraps the chip back in my foil and puts it by the door. She says, "Take this out on the trail tomorrow. Throw
it over the cliff."
They make me a bed under the table I just bled on. I think to thank them but, warm and full of hot food, I fall
asleep before I can get the words out.