"Ursula K. Leguin - The Flyers Of Gy - An Interplanetary Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

Some of course survive the fall. But they never fall again, because they can
never fly again. Once the wings have failed, they are useless. They remain
paralyzed, dragging along beside and behind their owner like a huge, heavy
feather cape.

Foreigners ask why flyers don't carry parachutes in case of wing failure. No
doubt they could. It is a question of temperament. Winged people who fly are
those willing to take the risk of wing failure. Those who do not want the risk
do not fly. Or perhaps those who consider it a risk do not fly, and those who
fly do not consider it a risk.

As amputation of the wings is invariably fatal, and surgical removal of any
part of them causes acute, incurable, crippling pain, the fallen flyers and
those who choose not to fly must drag their wings about all their lives,
through the streets, up and down the stairs. Their changed bone structure is
not well suited to ground life; they tire easily walking, and suffer many
fractures and muscular injuries. Few non-flying flyers live to sixty.

Those who do fly face their death every time they take off. Some of them,
however, are still alive and still flying at eighty.

It is a quite wonderful sight, takeoff. Human beings aren't as awkward as I
would have expected, having seen the graceless flapping of such masters of the
air as pelicans and swans getting airborne. Of course it is easiest to launch
from a perch or height, but if there's no such convenience handy, all they
need is a run of twenty or twenty-flve meters, enough for a couple of lifts
and downbeats of the great extended wings, and then a step that doesn't touch
the ground, and then they're up, aloft, soaring—maybe circling back overhead
to smile and wave down at uplifted faces before arrowing off above the roofs
or over the hills.

They fly with the legs close together, the body arched a little backward, the
legfeathers fanning out into a hawklike tail as needed. As the arms have no
integral muscular connection to the wings—winged Gyr are six-limbed
creatures—the hands may be kept down along the sides to reduce wind resistance
and increase speed. In a leisurely flight, they may do anything hands
do—scratch the head, peel a fruit, sketch an aerial view of the landscape,
hold a baby. Though the latter I only saw once, and it troubled me.

I talked several times with a winged Gyr named Ardiadia; what follows is all
in his own words, recorded, with his permission, during our conversations.

"Oh, yes, when I first found out—when it started happening to me, you know—I
was floored. Terrified! I couldn't believe it. I'd been so sure it wouldn't
happen to me. When we were kids, you know, we used to joke about so-and-so
being 'flighty,' or say 'he'll be taking off one of these days'—but me? Me
grow wings? It wasn't going to happen to me. So when I got this headache, and
then my teeth ached for a while, and then my back began to hurt, I kept
telling myself it was a toothache, I had an infection, an abscess.… But when
it really began there was no more fooling myself. It was terrible. I really