"Harry Harrison - Captive Universe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

suddenly and went into his house. His mother was at the metatl, grinding the corn for the evening meal: it
would take two hours to prepare it. And another two hours of the same labor for the morning meal. This
was a woman's work. She looked up and nodded at him without slowing the back and forth motion.

"I see Malinche out there. She is a good girl and works very hard."
Malinche was framed by the open entranceway, legs wide, bare feet planted firmly in the dust, the
roundness of her large breasts pushing out the huipil draped across her shoulders, her arms at her side
and her fists clenched as though waiting for something. Chimal turned away and, squatting on the mat,
drank cool water from the porous jug.

"You are almost twenty-one years of age, my son," Quiauh said with irritating calmness, "and the clans
must be joined."

Chimal knew all this, but he did not wish to accept it. At 21 a man must marry; at 16 a girl must marry. A
woman needed a man to raise the food for her; a man needed a woman to prepare the food for him. The
clan leaders would decide who would be married in such a way that it profited the clans the most, and
the matchmaker would be called in…

"I will see if I can get some fish," he said suddenly, standing and taking his knife from the niche in the wall.
His mother said nothing, her lowered head bobbed as she bent over her work. Malinche was gone and
he hurried between the houses to the path that led south, through the cactus and rock, toward the end of
the valley. It was still very hot and when the path went along the rim of the ravine he could see the river
below, dried to a sluggish trickle this time of year. Yet it was still water and it looked cool. He hurried
toward the dusty green of the trees at the head of the valley, the almost vertical walls of stone closing in
on each side as he went forward. It was cooler here on the path under the trees: one of them had fallen
since he had been here last, he would have to bring back some firewood.

Then he reached the pond below the cliffs and his eyes went up along the thin stream of the waterfall that
dropped down from high above. It splattered into the pond which, although it was smaller now with a
wide belt of mud around it, he knew was still deep at the center. There would be fish out there, big fish
with sweet meat on their bones, lurking under the rocks along the edge. With his knife he cut a long, thin
branch and began to fashion a fish spear.

Lying on his stomach on a shelf of rock that overhung the pool he looked deep into its transparent
depths. There was a flicker of silver motion as a fish moved into the shadows: it was well out of reach.
The air was dry and hot, the distant hammer of a bird's bill on wood sounded unnaturally loud in the
silence. Zopilotes were birds and they fed on all kinds of meat, even human meat, he had seen that for
himself. When? Five or six years ago?

As always, his thoughts started to veer away from that memory—but this time they did not succeed. The
hot dart of irritation that had been planted in the field still stirred at his mind and, in sudden anger, he
clutched at the memory of that night. What had he seen? Pieces of meat. Armadillo, or rabbit perhaps?
No, he could not trick himself into believing that. Man was the only creature who was big enough to have
furnished those lumps of flesh. One of the gods had put them there, Mixtec perhaps, the god of death, to
feed his servants the vultures who look after the dead. Chimal had seen the god's offering and had
fled—and nothing had happened. Since that night he had walked in silence waiting for the vengeance that
had never arrived.

Where had the years gone? What had happened to the boy who was always in trouble, always asking
questions that had no answers? The prod of irritation struck deep and Chimal stirred on the rock, then