"Julian May - The Pliocene Exiles 02 - The Golden Torc 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

"Sure, Bry. I understand. My own reasons for coming weren't that different. Except that no one was waiting... But there's something you've got to expect, when you do find her. She'll be changed."

"She was a latent. They'll have given her a silver torc. I'm aware of that."

The big riverman shook his head slowly. Once again he touched his own gray necklet. "There's more to it than a latent's becoming operant, although God knows, acquiring metafaculties all of a sudden has its hazards, so I'm told. But even us grays, without getting any metafunctions to speak of, gain something fantastic through this torc. Something that we never had before." He pursed his thin purplish lips, then suddenly exclaimed, "Listen, man! What do you hear?"

"They're singing in their Tanu language."

"And to you, the words mean nothing. But to us collared ones, the Song says well met, and fear not, and this is it, and we-you-us! When a human being becomes part of the torced society, he gains a whole new level of consciousness. Even us grays, with no operant metafunctions, can share in it. It's more than telepathy, although that's a part of it. It's a whole new form of social intercourse, this mind-to-mind intimacy. How the hell can I explain it? Like being a member of some kind of superfamily. You know you belong to this great thing that keeps rolling along and taking you with it. You'll never be alone in your pain again. Never be outside. Never be rejected. Any time you need strength or comfort, you can dip into the collective resource. It's not a smothering thing because you can take as much or as little of it as you choose, well, subject to limitations unless you're a gold-wearer. You obey orders, just like in the service... But what I'm trying to tell you is that wearing these things changes you deep inside. It doesn't happen right away, but it does happen. As you wear the torc, you're educated whether you want to be or not. Your lady is going to be a different person than the one you remember."

"She might not want me. Is that what you're trying to prepare me for?"

"I don't know her, Bry. People react in different ways to the torcs. Some of them bloom. Most of them."

The anthropologist did not meet the skipper's dark eyes.

"And some don't. I see. What happens to the failures?"

"There aren't too many among us grays. The Tanu have worked out a fairish battery of tests to sort out the go and no go. Human psychotechnicians working under Lord Gomnol try to make sure that no normal human gets a gray torc unless his or her PS profile shows that the device will be generally beneficial to the individual's functioning. They don't want to waste the torcs because they're not easy to make. If your psychosocial tests show that you're a maverick, likely to whack out unless you're allowed to stew in your own independent juice, then you don't get a gray collar. They'll coerce you in more conventional ways to make you a productive member of their society, or else give up and toss you into the discard. But the real winners here in Exile are the torc wearers. The Tanu know they can trust us because they can share our thoughts and control our rewards. So we're allowed positions of responsibility. Look at me! Tanu are lousy swimmers. But I've had members of the High Table, the top Tanu administration, riding in my boat."

"With never a qualm, I trust."

"Okay-laugh. But I'd never do anything to endanger the lives of the exotics and they know it. It would be unthinkable!"

"But you're not free."

"Nobody is ever free," the skipper said. "Was I a goddam lily of the field back in the Milieu, piloting my ferryboat on Tallahatchie with Lee driving me crazy jealous? Here in this world, with this torc, I follow Tanu orders. And in return I get a share in the kind of mind-pleasures that only the metapsychics got in our twentysecond century. It's like seeing with a thousand eyes. Or going high with a thousand bodies all at once. I can't tell you how it is. I'm no poet. No psychologist, either."

"I'm beginning to understand, Johnny. The torcs are certainly more complex than I first thought."

"They make life a lot easier for the people who can stand up to 'em. Just take the matter of language. In our Milieu, the exotic sociologists knew how vital it was for each single race to have a single language. That's why we humans had to agree to become monolingual as a condition to Milieu acceptance, and Standard English won hands down. But with this mental speech, any kind of verbal misunderstanding is impossible! When another person mindspeaks to you, you know exactly what the message is."

Half to himself, Bryan murmured, "Barbaric. That's why the Milieu places such strict limitations on the metas. Especially the human metas."

"I don't get your point there, Bry. See what I mean? If you wore a torc, I'd know exactly what you were trying to say."

"Forget it, Johnny. Just my cynicism showing its fangs."

"To me, the mental unity seems ideal. But then, I'm just a dumb sailorman whose lover went over to another. Now if the two of us had been able to understand each other from the start... aw, the hell with it. Now there are thousands of people who love me. In a manner of speaking."

The skipper waved at the procession of riders. Almost all of them immediately waved back. Bryan felt something cold clutch at his bowels.

"Johnny?"

The skipper broke out of his reverie. "Mm?"

"Not all of the time-travelers are tested for psychocompatibility before being torced. Stein wasn't. They collared him when he became a menace."

Highjohn shrugged. "You can understand why. The torc can be used to subdue rebellious people on a short-range or longrange basis. Since your pal is still with us, I presume they have some plans for him. Certain types, medics and some other specialists who rarely come through the gate, they get collared willy-nilly, too. Essential occupations."