"Gwyneth Jones - Flowerdust" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Gwyneth)

the time you’d done that, of course the perishable had perished!
“Silly fools,” commented the cat. “They collect all this food, leave
it to feed the rats, then they don’t eat the rats. Humans are
absurd.”
“It’s meant for the people from across the causeway.”
“Meant to be wasted? Now that makes a kind of sense.”
 Cho looked at the cat sidelong, and pattered on through the ranks
of torn cartons and oozing bales of grain. She stopped, and crouched
to peer into the innards of the defunct ice plant. “Poor thing.”
The doll called Chosen Among the Beautiful and the toy cat called
Divine Endurance had traveled far, in time— it seemed—as well as
space, to reach Ranganar. In the city where they were created, time
had been standing still for who knows how long. Since the
mysterious catastrophe when the toymakers vanished, the
machines in the factory had labored on alone in a desolation:
tireless, faultless, helplessly obedient. When they finally ran down,
the cat, who had been the factory mascot, set out with Cho, the last
of the machines’ creations, in search of the toymakers and of the
third remaining doll, Cho’s “brother,” who had made this journey
long before.
They had found the human race, or at least a ragged and divided
remnant thereof. One division lived here, on the fertile Peninsula
jutting down from the Asian landmass into the ocean—with this
island of Ranganar lying off the southern tip. The other people, who
ruled the Peninsula, lived at sea on artificial islands.
The dead ice plant was an uncomfortable reminder for the two
survivors from another age. They were machines themselves,
however marvelous, and machines were not wanted here. True
Peninsulans had learned to do without them. Even in Ranganar,
where machinery was supposed to be acceptable, mechanical things
were somehow neglected and falling into final decay.
Out on the Rulers’ Islands, things were different. Something of
the toymakers’ civilization survived there, clear, simple, clean.
Divine Endurance admired the Rulers. She found the Peninsulans
messy and muddled, and their attitude to machines insulting. In
her opinion, Cho’s place was out at sea.
But Cho had been made to be the perfect companion of one
special human. On the Peninsula she had found her person . Her
loyalty was settled; her journey was over.
“Come on,” grumbled the cat. “I thought you had an errand with
these particular smelly degenerates.”
The camp was for refugees. A long causeway joined Ranganar
Island to the mainland of the Peninsula. People had fled across it
because of an outbreak of rebellion in the north, against the Rulers’
occupying army. Cho gave Divine Endurance another mistrustful
glance. She knew that the cat could twist the inbuilt rules that
bound them both to serve and protect all humans. And she knew
how much Divine Endurance resented having been abandoned.
When the cat started encouraging her to help her human friends,
Cho was suspicious.