"10 - Love is the Plan the Plan is Death by James Tiptree, Jr." - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Awards)

And you answered! You!.
So tiny you, hidden under a leaf! Shrilling Li! Li Lililee! Trilling, thrilling-half-mocking, already imperious. Oh, how I whirl, crash, try to look under all my feet, stop frozen in horror of squashing the Lilild Lee! Rocking, longing, moaning Moggadeet.
And you came out, you did.
My adorable firemite, threatening ME!
When I see your littlest hunting claws upraised my whole gut melts, it floods me. I am all tender jelly. Tender! Oh, tender-fierce like a Mother, I think! Isn't that how a Mother feels? My jaws are sluicing juice that isn't hunger-juice-I am choking, with fear of frighting you or bruising your tininess-I ache to grip and knead you, to eat you in one gulp, in a thousand nibbles
Oh the power of red-the Old One said it! Now I feel my special hands, my tender hands I always carry hidden-now they come swelling out, come pushing toward my head! What? What?
My secret hands begin to knead and roll the stuff that's dripping from my jaws.
Ali, that arouses, you, too, my redling, doesn't it?
Yes, yes, I feel-torment-I feel your shy excitement! How your body remembers even now our lovedawn, our very first moments of Moggadeet-Leely. Before I knew You-Yourself, before you knew Me. It began then, my heartlet, our love-knowing began in that very first instant when your Moggadeet stared down at you like a monster bursting. I saw how new you were, how helpless!
Yes, even while I loomed over you marvellingeven while my secret hands drew and spun your fate-,
, even then it came to me in pity that long ago, last year
when I was a child, I saw other little red ones among my brothers, before our Mother drove them away. I was only a foolish baby then; I didn't understand. I thought they'd grown strange and silly in their redness and Mother did well to turn them out. Oh stupid Moggadeet!
But now I saw you, my flamelet-I understood! You were only that day cast out by your Mother. Never had you felt the terrors of a night alone in the world; you couldn't imagine that such a monster as Frim was hunting you. Oh my ruby nestling, my baby red! Never, I vowed it, never would I leave you-and have I not kept that vow? Never! I, Moggadeet, I would be your Mother.
Great is the Plan, but I was greater!
All I learned of hunting in my lonely year, to drift like the air, to leap, to grip so delicately-all these learnings became for you! Not to bruise the smallest portion of your bright body. Oh, yes! I captured you whole in all your tiny perfection, though you sizzled and spat and fought me like the sunspark you are. And then
And then
I began to-Oh, terror! Delight-shame! How can I speak such a beautiful secret?-the Plan took me as a Mother guides her child and with my special hands I began to
t began to bind you up!
Oh yes! Oh yes! My special hands that had no use, now all unfurled and engorged and alive, never stopping the working in the strong juice of my jawsthey began to bind you, passing over and around and beneath you, every moment piercing me with fear and joy. I wound among your darling little limbs, into your inmost delicate recesses, gently swathing and soothing you, winding and binding until you became a shining jewel. Mine!
-But you responded. I know that now. We know! Oh yes, in your fierce struggles, shyly you helped me,

always at the end each strand fell sweetly into place . . . Winding you, binding you, loving Leelyloo! . . . How our bodies moved in our first weaving song! I , feel it even now, I melt with excitement! How I wove the silk about you, tying each tiny limb, making you perfectly helpless. How fearlessly you gazed up at me, your terrifying captor! You! You were never frightened, as I'm not frightened now. Isn't it strange, my loveling? This sweetness that floods our bodies when we yield to the Plan. Great is the Plan! Fear it, fight ` it-but hold the sweetness yet.
Sweetly began our lovetime, when first I became your new true Mother, never to cast you out. How I fed you and caressed and tended and fondled you! What a responsibility it is to be a Mother. Anxiously I carried you furled in my secret arms, savagely I drove off all intruders, even the harmless banlings in the grass, in fear every moment that you were stifled or crushed!
And all the warm nights long, how I cared for your helpless little body, carefully releasing each infant limb, flexing and stretching it, cleaning every scarlet morsel of you with my giant tongue, nibbling your . baby claws with my terrible teeth, revelling in your baby hum, pretending to devour you while you shrieked with glee, Li! Lilili! Love-lili, Leelylee! But .: the greatest joy of all We spoke!
We spoke together, we two! We -communed, we shared, we poured ourselves one into the other. Love, how we stammered and stumbled at the first, you in your strange Mother-tongue and I in mine! How we blended our singing wordlessly and then with words, until more and more we came to see with each other's eyes, to hear, to taste, to feel the world of each. f other, until I became Leelyloo and you became Moggadeet, until finally we became together a new thing, Moggadeet-Leely, Lilliloo-Mogga, LiliMoggaloolydeet!
Oh love, are we the first? Have others loved with their whole selves? Oh sad thinking, that lovers before us have left no trace. Remember us! Will you remember, my adored, though Moggadeet has spoiled everything and the cold grows? If only I could hear you speak once more, my red, my innocent one. You are remembering, your body tells me you remember even now. Softly, hold me softly yet. Hear your Moggadeet!

You told me how it was being you, yourself, tiny redling-Lilliloo. Of your Mother, your dreams, your baby joys and fears. And I told you mine, and all my learnings in the world since the day when my own Mother

Hear me, my heartmate! Time runs away.

'-On the last day of my childhood my Mother called us all under her.

"Sons! S-son-n-nss!" Why did her dear voice creak so?

My brothers came in slowly, fearfully from the summer green. But I, small Moggadeet, I climb eagerly up under the great arch of her body, seeking the golden Mother-fur. Right into her warm cave I come, where her Mother-eyes are glowing, the cave that sheltered us so strongly all our lives, as I shelter you, my dawn-flower.

I long to touch her, to hear her speak and sing to us again. Her Mother-fur troubles me, it is tattered and drab. Shyly I press against one of her huge food glands. It feels dry, but a glow sparks deep in her Mother-eye.

"Mother," I whisper. "It's me, Moggadeet!"

"SONNNNNS!" Her voice rumbles through her armor. My big brothers huddle by her legs, peering back at the sunlight. They look so funny, shedding, half gold, half black.

"I'm afraid!" whimpers my brother Frim nearby. Like me Frim still has his gold baby fur. Mother is speaking again but her voice booms so I can hardly understand.

"WINNN-TER! WINTER, I SAY! AFTER THE WARM COMES THE COLD WINTER. THE COLD WINTER BEFORE THE WARM COMES AGAIN, COMES..."

Frim whimpers louder, I cuff him. What's wrong, why is her loving voice so hoarse and strange now? She always hummed us so tenderly, we nestled in her warm Mother-fur sucking the lovely Mother-juices, rocking to her steady walking-song. Ee-mooly-mooly, Ee-mooly-mooly, while far below the earth rolled by Oh, yes, and how we held our breaths and squealed when she began her mighty hunting-hum! Tann! Tann! Dir! Dir! Dir Hataan! HATONN! How we clung in ,the thrilling climax when she plunged upon her prey and we heard the crunching, the tearing, the gurgling in her body that meant soon her food-glands would be richly full.

Suddenly I see a black streak down below-a big brother is running away! Mother's booming voice breaks off. Her great body tenses, her plates clash Mother roars!