"James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

The males were tremendous, Tivonel admits it now. She didn't really
believe how superior they were until she saw them in action. So
fantastically life-sensitive, such range! Of course they had to get used to
the wild wind first—but then how brave they were, how tireless. Tracking
the elusive signals of the Lost Ones while they tumbled free down the
thickly whirling streams of the Great Wind itself, gorging themselves like
savages. They must have circled Tyree a hundred times while they
searched, found, followed, lost them, and searched again.
But they couldn't have done it without me guiding them and keeping
them in contact, she thinks proudly. That takes a female. What a year,
what an adventure up there! The incredible richness of life in the Wild, an
endless rushing webwork of myriads of primitive creatures, plants and
animals all pulsing with energy and light-sounds, threaded with the lives
of larger forms. The rich eternal Winds where our race was born. But oh,
the noisy nights up there! The Sound blasting away overhead through the
thin upper air—it was rough even for her. The sensitive males had suffered
agonies, some of them even got burned a little. But they were brave; like
true Fathers, they wanted those children.
That was the most exciting part, she thinks: when the males at last
made tenuous mind-contact with the Lost Ones and slowly learned their
crude light-speech. And finally they won their confidence enough to
achieve some merger and persuade them to let the children be taken down
to be properly brought up in Deep. Only a male could do that, Tivonel
decides; I don't have the patience, let alone the field-strength.
And how pathetic it was to find the Lost Ones had preserved patchy
memory from generations back, when their ancestors had been blown up
to the Wild by that terrible explosion under Old Deep. These are surely the
last survivors, the only remaining wild band. Now the children are saved.
Very satisfactory! But tell the truth, she's sorry in a way; she'd love to do it
again.
She'll miss all this, she knows it. The Deep is getting so complicated and
ingrown. Of course the mates want to stay down there and let us feed
them, that's natural. But even some of the young females won't budge up
into the real Wind. And now they have all those tame food-plants down
there.... But she'll never stay down for good, never. She loves the Wild,
night-noise and all. Father understood when he named her Tivonel,
far-flyer; it's a pun that also means uncivilized or wild-wind-child. I'm
both, she thinks, her mantle flickering lacy coral chuckles. She casts a
goodbye scan up to where Tyree's planetary gales roar by forever, unheard
by any of her race.
"The floater's here!"
The flash is from her friend Iznagel, the Station's eldest-female. They're
wrestling the floater into balance on the Station updraft.
The floater is a huge vaned pod, a plant-product brought from the
lowest deeps above the Abyss. One of the proud new achievements of the
Deepers. It's useful for something like this, Tivonel admits it. But she
prefers to travel on her own sturdy vanes.
The pod-driver covers the yellow hooter and climbs off to stretch. She's
a middle-aged female Tivonel hasn't met. Iznagel presents her with
food-packets and the driver sparkles enthusiastic thanks; it's a long trip