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

She was silent after that but he lay on his side and watched the stars rise and wheel overhead and sleep
would not come. The village was quiet and everyone was asleep and he thought again about the vultures.

He went over his plan once more, step by step, and could find no fault in it. Or rather one fault
only—that a priest had happened to pass and had seen him. The rest of the plan had been perfect, even
the law which permitted him to climb the wall had been as he remembered it. And the vultures did fly to
the same spot on the cuff above. Day after day, and for as long as he remembered this had interested him
and he had wanted to know why. It had bothered and annoyed him that he did not know the reason, until
finally he had made his plan. After all—was not the vulture the totem of his clan? He had a right to know
all that there was to know about them. No one else cared about it, that was certain. He had asked
different people and most of them had not bothered to answer, just pushing him away when he persisted.
Or if they had answered they had just shrugged or laughed and said that was the way vultures were and
forgotten about it at once. They didn't care, none of them cared at all. Not the children, especially the
children, nor the adults or even the priests. But he cared.

He had had other questions, but he had stopped asking questions about things many years ago. Because
unless the questions had simple answers that the people knew, or there were answers from the holy
books that the priests knew, asking just made people angry. Then they would shout at him or even hit
him, even though children were rarely struck, and it did not take Chimal long to discover that this was
because they themselves did not know. Therefore he had to look for answers in his own way, like this
matter with the vultures.

It had bothered him because although much was known about the vultures, there was one thing that was
not known—or even thought about. Vultures ate carrion, everyone knew that, and he himself had seen
them tearing at the carcasses of armadillos and birds. They nested in the sand, laid their eggs, raised their
scruffy chicks here. That was all they did, there was nothing else to know about them.

Except—why did they always fly to that one certain spot on the cliff? His anger at not knowing, and at
the people who would not help him or even listen to him, was rubbed raw by the pain of his recent
whipping. He could not sleep or even sit still. He stood up, invisible in the darkness, opening and closing
his fists. Then, almost without volition, he moved silently away from his home, threading his way through
the sleeping houses of the village of Quilapa. Even though people did not walk about at night. It was not a
taboo, just something that was not done. He did not care and felt bold in doing it. At the edge of the
open desert he stopped, looked at the dark barrier of the cliffs and shivered. Should he go there
now—and climb? Did he dare to do at night what he had been prevented from doing during the day? His
feet answered for him, carrying him forward. It would certainly be easy enough since he had marked a
fissure that seemed to run most of the way up to the ledge where the vultures sat. The mesquite tore at his
legs when he left the path and made his way through the clumps of tall cacti. When he reached the field of
maguey plants the going was easier, and he walked straight forward between their even rows until he
reached the base of the cliff.

Only when he was there did he admit how afraid he was. He looked around carefully, but there was no
one else to be seen and he had not been followed. The night air was cool on his body and he shivered:
his arms and back still hurt. There would be bigger trouble if he were found climbing the cliff again, worse
than a beating this time. He shivered harder and wrapped his arms about himself and was ashamed of his
weakness. Quickly, before he could worry anymore and find a reason to turn back, he leaped against the
rock until his fingers caught in the horizontal crack, then pulled himself up.

Once he was moving it was easier, he had to concentrate on finding the hand and toe holds he had used