"James Tiptree Jr. -10000 Light Years From Home" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

The sounds forced from his throat reached her in the night but her sleep was deep. She found him
spasming at the base of the ant castle, the great jaws throwing slaver in the moonlight. She flung herself
onto the writhing neck, clamping her thighs along his head to force her knees between his teeth. He
bucked, screamed. The fangs clashed, caught in the ridge of padding fitted inside both her knees. She
held his mouth open as they rolled, a dark stain spreading on her leg. He had already slashed his tongue,
she could not see how badly.
When the synchrony passed she released him, crouched murmuring over his head. His tongue
ceased bleeding. Slowly his nictitating membranes retracted and the moonlight lit green ghostfire in his
open eyes. He lifted his head. She nuzzled him, then pushed. He sighed and put his nose to his chest fur.
A vial was harnessed there. He worried out a bolus, gulped. Then he got up, walked stiffly away. There
was water nearby. When he returned she was asleep; he left her and leaped heavily up to his post.
Dawn showed them to be on an amba, a high tableland backed by a turreted line of cliffs. These
cliffs were their goal, but there was the empty plain to cross. The girl was well out upon it, trotting alone,
when the man’s figure appeared around an outcrop. He wavered, ready to turn back. But then the sight
of his prey gripped him and he was racing hard on her trail.
She speeded up and held the space between them almost constant for a kilometer before he began
to gain. She forced her legs. It was wind against wind now across the barren amba. The amba was sliced
with deep gullies. As her speed failed she was able to take advantage of the remembered course,
doubling to lure him into hidden ravines. At two of the deepest cuts she found the wolf waiting for her and
crossed by springing to his back where her pursuer would have to clamber up and down.
But for all she could do the man gained steadily. Between gusts of wind she heard the slap and
pound of his hard feet. She was gasping when she reached the tumbled hummocks at the foot of the
crags. He was close, closer. She leaped desperately up the rocks, remembering the stone that had been
flung at the dog. How far could that powerful strange limb propel a missile? She could only dodge
upward with searing lungs, all her hopes focused on the tunnel.
That was the crucial part. If he should know these cliffs!
But he was coming straight up after her, not stopping to throw, closing fast. Gravel rattled. She
could hear his grunts above her own breathing. He was only paces behind now.
Suddenly shadow was ahead—the old culvert mouth. A rope loop hung inside. She flung her weight
into it, spun dizzily for an instant. Then everything gave and she struck ground in a rain of dirt. At her
heels, the rockslide cascaded into the culvert, walled him out.
She panted for a time in the choking darkness and then started up the culvert’s floor. It was steep;
she scrabbled, sprawled, pushing herself up on her shoulder pads. This was an old skill; as an infant she
had rubbed her shoulders raw. Presently there was gray light above. The wolf’s head was waiting for her
at the top.
She emerged onto the old road bed and they went together to look over the brink of the cliff. It was
blowing hard here. She leaned against him as they peered down.
Far below, a red figure worked at the rocks before the culvert. The cliff between them hung sheer,
he could not get up this way. The girl sighed, grinned, still breathing hard. She nosed the wolf’s back,
found the canteen mouth and sucked. He whined softly, open-mouthed.
They went again through the ritual of exposing her body. As he dragged down her breeches she
giggled. He growled and nipped at her belly. Then he reared up and pulled off the cap to let the blonde
silk blow free.
She advanced to the cliff edge, called into the wind. A red face turned up to her. Its mouth opened.
She motioned with her head, stepped to her left. In that direction the roadway had been breached by a
rockslide, leaving a moraine he could climb.
He left off staring and mouthing and began to circle toward the moraine, stopping often to look up.
She paced along above him until rocks came between.
Then the wolf dressed her peremptorily and sent her staggering down the road in the other direction,
away from the man. She took up a steady jog, going northwest now with the sun and the wind in her