"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 12 - Star Slaver" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

the effect that it is extremely difficult for any girl to be ugly at fifteen.
Lucky Candila was also possessed of what was once known as "good
bones." 3 4 Unbound hair was as unthinkable as an uncovered head for any girl
of her advanced years but here, at the village's combined bath and laundry,
she was permitted total nakedness. Because she was here helping her mother
wash clothes. And because (after some stormy midnight sessions at homes a
century ago) the elders had reconvened at the djeme and had acceded to their
wives' demands. Now the guard who sat in the bamboo and rattan tower four days
each week to warn off intruders (and oversee the bathers) was a woman. She was
also too old for more vigorous work. Too, like most Daresslamites, she had a
skinful of boils from their high-iodine diet of krill. Like any Daresslamite
of advanced years, the old woman also suffered from trachoma. Candila's
mother, at twenty-eight, was constantly laving bleary eyes with the river that
had already flushed a continent larger than most inhabited planets. Village
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boys knew the old watchwoman was practically blind. Village girls knew it too.
They were torn between modesty and the need to capture a husband. Waist deep
in the water and with unbound hair like a shawl over the upper half of her
burgeoning pubescence, Candila was a lost cause to the village voyeurs.
Understandably, they persisted anyway. Enduring shrew bites and the myriad
humming, buzzing, stinging bloodsuckers that infested the canebrake around the
beach. Someday maybe Candila would forget . . . straighten up for a moment . .
. stretch. With God's Grace anything was possible. And Candila's skin, by
village standards, was flawless. She bore a few minor scars but only one major
disfigurement. Still, the cavity in the middle of her forehead had been turned
into an asset: the scar made a convenient carrier for the topaz gleam of her
caste mark. The watchwoman was near-blind and the gawkers came so close that
it was impossible to pretend they were not there. Mothers flung gobs of mud at
the tower where the old woman dozed. She dutifully whanged away at her gong.
Disappointed, the village voyeurs scuttled back 5 through the brush. All were
very busy when the imam came sniffing through their customary workplaces. With
no reason to delay or display, girls finished the laundry in record
time. Mother and daughter pairs came from the water and stood for a moment
sunning themselves dry before donning all-encompassing chadors and balancing
bundles of clean clothes on their heads for the stroll home. Most of the
voyeurs had departed. Not all. Candila's mother was feeling her years. They
finished last. Standing on the bank, waiting to dry off, Candila was abruptly
frightened out of her fourteen-and-a-half-year-old wits. Her mother, tired,
bleary-eyed and worn, lay prone. Umm's nostrils were nearly in the water. It
had happened with such suddenness! Umm was twitching and jerking. Candila knew
the signs. She did not like her father but abruptly she knew that like him or
not, from now on all the housework would be hers. Before she had time to
shriek her despair, a stranger appeared. He was not a villager. Not in those
skintight black clothes! Anyway, his eyes were wrong and his skin too
golden-yellow. He was putting something she had never seen before back into a
sheath at his belt. "She'll be all right in a few minutes," he said. His voice
was not villager either. Candila heard a mechanical quality, as if the words