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

Meat. Flesh. And he had actually touched it, a piece over a foot, almost two feet in length, and as thick
as his hand was long. On feast days, he had eaten meat and had watched his mother prepare it. Fish, or
small birds caught in a net, or the best of all, guajolote, the turkey with the sweet white meat, cooked in
strips and laid on the mashed beans and tortillas. But how big was the biggest piece of meat from the
biggest bird? There was only one creature from which pieces of flesh this big could have been wrenched.

Man.

It was a wonder he did not keep going to his death when he slid over the edge of the cliff, but his young
fingers caught of their own accord and his toes dug in and he climbed downward. He had no memory of
the descent. The stream of his thoughts broke into drops like water when he remembered what he had
seen. Meat, men, sacrifices the zopilote god had placed here for the vultures to eat. He had seen it.
Would his body be chosen next to feed them? Trembling uncontrollably when he reached the bottom, he
fell and long moments passed before he could force himself up from the sand to stumble back toward the
village. Physical exhaustion brought some relief from the terror and he began to realize how dangerous it
would be if he were discovered now, coming back this way. He crept cautiously between the brown
houses, with their windows like dark, staring eyes, until he reached his own home. His-petlatl was still
lying where he had left it; it seemed incredible that nothing should have changed in the endless time that he
had been away, and he gathered it up and pulled it after him through the doorway and spread it near the
banked but still warm fire. When he pulled the blanket over himself he fell asleep instantly, anxious to
leave the waking world that had suddenly become more frightening than the worst nightmare.




3
The number of the months is eighteen, and the name of the eighteenmonths is a year. The third
month is Tozoztontli and this is when the corn is planted and there are prayers and fasting so that
the rain will come so that in the seventh month the corn will ripen. Then in the eighth month
prayers are said to keep away the rain that would destroy the ripening corn…
The rain god, Tlaloc, was being very difficult this year. He was always a moody god, with good reason
perhaps, because so much was asked of him. In certain months rain was desperately needed to water the
young corn, but in other months clear skies and sunlight were necessary to ripen it. Therefore, in many
years, Tlaloc did not bring rain, or brought too much, and the crop was small and the people went
hungry.

Now he was not listening at all. The sun burned in a cloudless sky and one hot day followed another
without change. Lacking water, the small shoots of new corn that pressed up through the hardened and
cracked earth were far smaller than they should have been, and had a gray and tired look to them.
Between the rows of stunted corn almost the entire village of Quilapa stamped and wailed, while the
priest shouted his prayer and the cloud of dust rose high in the stifling air.

Chimal did not find it easy to cry. Almost all of the others had tears streaking furrows into their
dust-covered cheeks, tears to touch the ram god's heart so that his tears of rain would fall as theirs did.
As a child Chimal had never taken part in this ceremony, but now that he had passed his twentieth year
he was an adult, and shared adult duties and responsibilities. He shuffled his feet on the hard dirt and
thought of the hunger that would come and the pain in his belly, but this made him angry instead of tearful.
Rubbing at his eyes only made them hurt. In the end he moistened his finger with saliva, when no one was
looking, and drew the lines in the dust on his face.