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

clicked. He trudged on, hoping he would not have to swim.
At last a hard woman’s voice said, “Leave him here. You can take that off now.”
He bunked into an enormous green dimness, a maze of terraces crumbling into water, low walls,
incongruous wires, a plastic console in a carved niche. Folds of rock hung from the sky. This was a very
old place.
“He will be here in an hour,” said the woman, watching him. “He is on the reef.”
Her hair was gray. She wore a wetsuit but no weapons and her nose had been slit and crudely
repaired. An Empire prisoner, one of the Terran traitors who had worked for Sawewe.
 “Did they tell you about the contamination?”
Keller nodded.
“The Empire had no need to do that. We never had weapons there. If he talks to you will you tell
lies like the others?”
“No.”
“Maybe.”
“Did I lie about Atlixco?”
Her shrug conceded nothing. Keller could see that her face had once been very different.
“That’s why he decided to see you.”
“I’m very grateful, Mamsen.”
“No titles. My name is Kut.” She hesitated. “His wife Nantli was my sister.”
She went away and Keller settled on a stone bench beside an ancient stalagmite frieze. Through the
fins of a fish-god he could see two sealmen wearing headsets: a communications center. The pavement in
front of him ended in a natural pool which, shimmered away into gloom, lit here and there by yellow
light-shafts from the stone sky. Water chuckled, a generator keened.
Suddenly Keller was aware that a man was squatting quietly by the poolside, looking at him. When
their eyes met the man smiled. Keller was immediately struck by the peaceful openness of the stranger’s
face. His smile was framed in a curly black beard. A gentle pirate, Keller thought, or a minstrel. A very
tall man hunkered down like a boy, holding something.
Keller rose and sauntered over. It was a curious shell.
“The carapace has two openings,” the man told him, turning the shell. “The animal inside is
bimorphic, sometimes a single organism, sometimes two. The natives call it Noshingra, the come-and-go
animal.” He smiled up at Keller, his eyes very clear and defenseless. “What’s your name?”
“Keller, Outplanet News. What’s yours?”
The man’s eyes softened as though Keller had made him a present and he continued to gaze at
Keller in a way so receptive and innocent that the newsman, who was very tired, found himself speaking
of his journey and his hopes for the coming interview. The tall man listened peacefully, touching the shell
with his hands if it were a talisman that could protect them both from war and power and pain.
Presently the woman Kut came back with a mug of mate and the man unfolded himself and drifted
quietly away.
“Biologist?” Keller asked. “I didn’t catch his name.”
The woman’s face went bleaker.
“Vivyan.”
The newsman’s memory hunted, jarred.
“Vivyan? But—”
She sighed. Then she jerked her head, motioning Keller to follow her. They went along behind a
wall which became an open fretwork. Looking through, Keller could see the tall figure ambling toward
them across a little bridge, still holding his sheel.
“Watch,” the woman told him.
The boy Vivyan had noticed the brown man first around the ski-fires of the snowy planet Horl.
Vivyan noticed him particularly because he did not come to talk as most people did. Better so, Vivyan
felt obscurely. He did not even learn the brown man’s name then but simply saw him among the flame-lit