"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 02 - Commitment Hour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

Then I was torn away from the thing and there were other people there, throwing stones at the Neut,
thrusting at It with the butts of their spears. The Neut howled as a sharp rock opened a cut across Its
forehead. It looked back at me once, hungrily, then fled.

That was how we Tobers treated Neuts: immediate exile, and death if the monsters ever returned. Neuts
were renegades, malcontents, heretics. Untold generations of our people had chosen a permanent sex in
their Commitment Hour, accepting that they had to abandon either their male or female halves... but
Neuts refused to let go of either side. Neuts claimed you didn't have to reject half your life, that people
could follow both male and female ways. So Tober Cove hated Neuts with the fierce burning hate you
always aim at someone who says your pain is stupid and self-imposed.

To suggest that I should turn Neut—that the godswanted me to turn Neut—the thought was poison. An
evil so disgusting, my brain could hardly grasp it.

"Fullin?" It was Cappie calling, very close—on the other side of the bulrushes, not far from the place
where I'd called to the stranger. Perhaps she'd seen the fire I'd made with the cattails. "What are you
doing on the flats?" she asked, her voice whetted sharp with anger.

"There's someone else nearby," I said as quietly as I could. "Someone dangerous. Don't make any
noise."

"How could there be anyone else here?" she asked, softer but not soft.

"I don't know what's going on; I just know there's trouble, all right? Go someplace safe and stay there."
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




"Don't talk to me like that!"

"Cappie, please..."

But the rushes parted and she stepped out to join me. I sighed. So much for vigil.

Surprisingly, she wore pants, bleached cotton pants. Perhaps I shouldn't have been taken aback—pants
are more practical than skirts when spending the night in a mosquito-filled marsh—but I had never seen
her in pants, not in the years she was female. She must have sneaked the clothes from her father's closet:
they were much too big for her slender frame. Held sloppily at waist level by suspenders and stuffed
firmly into socks at her ankles, the pants billowed in the middle like the sail of a perch boat. Her shirt
billowed too, a man's shirt so large and loose there was only a hint of her compact breasts under the
cloth. And her hair... no billowing there. Her long black beautiful hair was gone. Just a few hours earlier,
it had draped fluidly over her bare shoulder as her daughter Pona sucked sloppily at supper. But now
Cappie's lovely thick hair was chopped off raggedly, as short as mine.

Cappie the woman was dressed and barbered as a man. I wondered if this could be some new ploy to
arouse my interest. If so, it hadn't worked; I found it unsettling and unnatural. Commitment Day tradition
allowed candidates to wear whatever they liked, but the town would still be scandalized.

"What have you done to yourself?" I blurted.