"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Dancers Like Children" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

the tulips with the pansies, the daisies with the sunflowers. It seemed odd to
me that a colony with such botanical expertise could not learn to grow native
herbs from seeds.
Children's laughter caught me again, near the same block it had before.
I glanced down. The children were playing in their park, sitting in a circle,
pounding their fists against the ground. I walked over slowly, hoping that
this time they would talk to me. Michael Dengler sat in the middle of the
group, smiling as if he had found his own personal heaven. I relaxed a little.
Maybe my advice had helped him. Maybe my wasted ten years had helped someone.
One of the boys pointed at me. The children got up and backed away, as
if I were an enemy; then, as a group, they turned and ran.
I stopped and watched them go. Only one child glanced back as he ran.
Michael Dengler. I waved at him. He didn't wave back.
I continued to the offices of the Extra-Species Alliance. A woman sat
at the desk. She was petite, with close-cropped hair and wide eyes. "Latona
couldn't be here," she said, "but she told me to show you the holo, and she
said she'd answer any of your questions this afternoon."
I nodded, and followed the woman into another closet-sized room with a
holojecter set up. She flicked on the 'jecter, flicked off the lights, and
left me.
Dancers filled the room, less frightening without their tangy cinnamon
scent. They circled around a gray-skinned child, huddled on the desert floor.
The circling seemed to last forever, then a Dancer grabbed a ceremonial knife
and slit open the breastbone, reached and removed something small, blackened,
and round. A heart, I assumed. The Dancer handed the black object to another
Dancer, who set it in a jar. Then the Dancer slit again, removing two thin,
shriveled bits of flesh from the child's interior. The child didn't move.
Another Dancer put the flesh into a jar beside the heart. Finally the first
Dancer lifted the child's hands by a single finger and sliced once along the
wrists. The hands fell off, and the child's arms fell to its side. The Dancers
carried the child to a tree and leaned the child against the tree. They
wrapped the child's chest with rope leaves, and as they placed the arms on the
child's lap, I could see small fingers peeking out of the hollow wrists like
human hands hidden in the sleeves of a jacket one size too big.
The Dancer child did not bleed. Latona's comparison to a human child
losing its baby teeth was an apt one.
Then the time-lapse became clear. The child's hands grew; its skin grew
dark like that of other Dancers. Gradually, it moved on its own, and the adult
Dancers helped it crawl into a nearby tent. Then the holo ended.
I replayed it three times, memorizing each action, and confirming that
there was no blood.
Things weren't adding up: things Latona said, things I had seen. I shut
off the 'jecter and left the room, thankful that the woman was not at the
front desk. I needed to read my briefing packet, to see if the information in
there differed from the information Latona had given me about the Dancers.
I hurried back to my apartment and sat in the front room reading.
Latona was right. The Dancers showed no ability to remember things from visit
to visit or even within visits. During the murders by the miners, the Dancers
returned to the sites of the deaths and continued to interact with the miners
as if nothing had happened. They never tried retaliation, and they never