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

“Come to the reefs.” It was fine how eagerly she came and let him teach her to quest down among
the firelace to the hidden caverns below. McCarthy’s fish circled and danced above their nests, rolling
horrified eyes, so tame and ludicrous that the humans spluttered and had to surface to laugh.
Nantli dived and laughed and dived again until Vivyan became worried and hauled her out on the
rocks. And later in the breast of the moonlit dunes it was very good. When she had left him he stretched
and set out up the beach to the home of his friend, bearing many things of which he wished to be told the
names.
McCarthy’s sun was a ghost flower rising on the misty sea when he walked back. Beautiful how it
fitted, Vivyan thought, the total serenity he always felt after his long talk in the lamplit room.
When he looked back at the beach ahead there was a gray-brown figure by the line of sea-wrack.
Jarring. He could think of nothing to do but walk on forward.
The brown man was turning a sea-feather with his foot. He didn’t look up, only said quietly,
“Strange pattern. What’s it called?”
Reassured, Vivyan squatted down to trace the sea-feather’s veins. “It’s a gorgonia, I think. A
colony of animals in a common tissue, a coenchyme. This one came from somewhere else, a spore from
the ships maybe.”
“Another pattern.” The brown man frowned, looking out to sea. “I’m interested in patterns. Like on
Horl you were doing birds then, wasn’t it? With that xenoecologist wallah around the mountain. And my
girl went with you, on Horl. And you checked in with your friendly ecologist and my girl and a couple of
our group turned up missing. Somebody came for them. Only it wasn’t anybody we know and nobody’s
heard of them since.”
He looked at Vivian.
“And here you’re into marine biology. And there’s this marine-life wallah down the line you have
long sessions with. And Nantli’s got interested in you. A pattern. How does the pattern go, Vivyan?
Does Nantli disappear too? I wouldn’t like that. Not Nantli.”
Vivyan kept turning the sea-feather, wailing for the sea-wind to carry away the harshness in the
brown man’s voice. After a moment he looked up and smiled. “What’s your name?”
Their eyes met really close then and something began happening inside Vivyan. The brown man’s
face was changing too, as if they were both under water.
“Vivyan,” the brown man said with fearful intensity, “Vivyan?”
He pronounced it wrong, like Feefyane. Their eyes locked together and a hurt started lunging
behind Vivyan’s eyes.
“Vivyan!” the brown man insisted in a horrible tearing voice. “Oh, no. You—” And then everything
was perfectly still until he whispered, “I think... I’ve been looking for you... Vivyan.”
Vivyan’s whole head was jerking, he tore his eyes down from the white-ringed glare. “Who are
you?” he stammered. “What’s your name?”
The brown man put two hard fingers under Vivyan’s jaw and turned his face up.
“Look at me. Think of Zilpan, Vivyan. Tlaara, Tlaara-tzunca... little Vivyan, don’t you know my
name?”
Vivyan gave a raw cry and lunged up clumsily at this small dangerous man. Then he was running into
the sea, hurling himself across the shallows to the green depths where no one could follow. He stroke
with all his strength, not looking back until he was in the thunders of the reef.
When the anger and hurtfulness had been cleaned away he made for a coralhead far out where he
rested and dived and ate a conch and some sweet wet seahares and drowsed in the foam. He saw many
calming things, and when the sun set he went back to shore. It was in his mind that he should go again to
visit his friend, but warm voices called him and he let himself be drawn to where huge arthrostraca were
being roasted in seaweed. He had never seen the brown man in this place, and soon he began to grin
again and eat vastly of the tender shellfish in the silvery silweed smoke.
 But there was an undercurrent here too, a strainedness. People were restless, talking quick and
low-voiced, looking past each other’s shoulders. Was something unpleasant building, cramping the air?