"Vonda N. McIntyre-Spectra" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

eyes. All the colors came, the ones that are in rainbows (it's so hard to remember rainbows... which was
on top, violet or red?) and some that aren't. The jagged lines and circles and flowing creatures moved
and danced and kept me company at night.
Now, when I'm supposed to be asleep, I remember my childhood companions and I touch my eyes. I
always hope that the colors will return and that I'll see the day again. It's hard to remember what colors
really look like. I hope, but I touch my closed eyelids and see nothing, and what I feel is hard and dead.
Crystals and circuits and lenses that allow me to resolve dark bands into fine lines. It all seems very
important to them. It is meaningless to me, and that makes me angry. Sometimes I claw at my eyes in the
night. I know I should not.
One day as I was coming home I heard voices. Hidden by the corner of our house, I watched. I heard
them call my mother selfish. They said we couldn't stay there anymore. She said they were wrong and
they knocked her down. I cried stop it! stop it! and beat my fists against their chests. They pulled me
away. I looked down and saw how small and frail she was. I tried to hit them again, but they laughed at
me and knocked me down too, and when I woke up I was here, and the world was gray shadows. I
wonder what they did to my mother...
The bands of light and dark fade. I stop. If I tried to keep working without information I would be
punished again. It is time for exercise. They want to keep us healthy. The eyepieces withdraw from my
dead sockets and the helmet lifts from my head. The world turns to gray, featureless, formless shapes. In
this it is worse than when I am working, when the magnified patterns are sharp and clear.
I turn around on my chair and stand up. Two steps forward. The floor moves. The first time it moved
beneath my feet I fell down. They had warned me about it. They were watching me my first day, so they
punished me. After that I did not fall. The floor takes us all to a large room where the paleness of the
walls is a little grayed by distance, and I can hear echoes.
The gray shapes of the others move around me. I know they cannot tell, and I think no one who can
see is watching, but I am ashamed to be naked. We put our hands on metal bars and push. Around and
around, until we perspire and the air drafts make us cold.
We all have glowing symbols on our backs, each different, so we may be identified. I can feel no
difference on my skin, so I don't know how they are made. I push, and walk around and around. There
is no symbol near me that I recognize. I hear conversations going on but they are all about the ecstasy of
the lights and who had the most unusual pattern. My sweat tickles me, and I want to scratch. Finally the
bars slow and lock. The shadows seem to spin around me. I almost fall. The pressure of the others
forces me to keep my balance.
We make our way to the moving hall again. I feel disoriented and dizzy. We squeeze our eyelids shut
and water gushes over us, cleaning the sweat away. The water is always too hot. Air dries us. Sometimes
it is too cold, and we are not really dried at all.
I remember swimming in a deep dark pond near our little house. I wasn't ashamed to be naked there,
and I liked the breezes that spread me with goosebumps. I remember grass and pebbles under my feet,
and sun cushioning the wind on my back.
The helmet lowers and clasps my head unmoving. The eyepieces extend, enter, attach, and I am once
more a receptacle for lines of black and bars of light. I no longer have to think carefully about what I am
doing. I think of later, when I can lie down and rest. There will be no patterns and no shadows against
the blackness where my sight should be. I think of the insubstantial varicolored companions of my
childhood. I am lonely... I think of another way to touch my eyelids, a way I've never tried before, so my
night friends may perhaps come back. I tell myself that I will be disappointed, but I do not believe it. I
believe it will work. I want to close my eyes now and try, but my eyes cannot close here, and if I take my
hands from the controls I will be punished again. I work with anticipation now, and eagerness, as if by
doing so the time will pass more quickly.
I make an error. I cringe from the shock and my mouth is metallic. My mind has ignored a dark line. I
do not understand how I could have missed it. I try again. The punishment surprises and hurts me. I do
not know what I have done wrong. The shock recurs. My actions become almost erratic. Perhaps it is