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

inch-wide space between the door and its frame, forcing myself to think about
things other than holographic images. Clearly, the people who lived inside the
dome had no fear of the elements or of each other. Anyone, or anything, could
open that door by wedging something inside the crack.
I felt better outside the room. The people inside made me feel
uncomfortable. They had discovered what they could through instruments and
measures and other "scientific" things. I had to crawl inside alien minds and
see what had caused such murders. If the colonists had suspected a human
killer, they would have brought any one of half a dozen other specialists to
the planet. Instead they had brought me.
I had to see the Dancers clearly, without dead Minarans clouding my
vision. If the Dancers killed with malicious intent, the colony had to be
protected or moved. I would simply approach things differently this time.
Instead of going to the leaders of the colony, I would go to Galactic
Security. That might prevent slaughter. The Dancers, with their small
population, were easier prey than the Minarans.
I stepped outside and blinked at the blue-tinted light. The dome
filtered the sunlight, deflecting the dangerous ultraviolet rays and allowing
only a modicum of heat inside. Roses grew beside the door, and young maples
lined the walks. Patches of grass peeked through, hidden by bushes and other
flowering plants. The care that the colonists had not placed in their homes,
they had placed in making the interior of the dome look like Earth. It felt
odd to stand here, among familiar trees and lush vegetation, and to know that
just outside the dome, a different alien world waited.
I crouched beside the roses and put my hand in the soil. Perhaps it was
less alkaline than the salt cliffs had led me to believe. Or perhaps the
colonists had imported the soil, as they had imported everything else. I saw
no reason to live in a new place if I were going to try so hard to make it
look like the place I had left. That attitude was a difference between me and
the colonists. I would collect thousands of differences before I was through.
The problem was whether thousands were enough or if they meant anything at
all. The differences I had to concentrate on were the differences between
human and Dancer thought. Something that should have taken a lifetime to
study, I would have to discover in a matter of weeks.
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IV
That night I dreamed of the Minarans. Their sleek sealbodies dripped
with water. They hovered around me, oversized eyes reproachful, as if they
were trying to warn me of something I would never understand. They reached out
to touch me, and I slapped their fingered fins away. Shudders ran through my
body. They had caused the murders. But I knew if I told the colonists, they
would slaughter the Minarans -- the fat mothers, the tiny males, and the white
pups that, not that much earlier, the children had watched as if they were
pets. Minaran blood was colorless but thick. It still coated my hands, leaving
them sticky and useless.
I blinked myself awake. A fan whirred in the darkness. The blanket
covering me was scratchy and too hot. I coughed, and tasted metallic air in
the back of my throat. The apartment Netta had given me seemed small and
close.
I had done nothing right since the Minaran trial. I should have