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

Presently larger figures appeared on the shore path. The men. Six of them, naked and ruddy like the
women but much more scarred. None was beyond first youth. The smallest was dark, all the others had
carroty hair and beards. Behind them trailed three dogs, tail-tucked, ready to flee.
The men shouted imperiously and walked on upriver. The women came out of the water and trotted
after them. At the next bend the whole party waded in and commenced to splash and flail, driving the fish
down to the nets. A baby screamed. The pair on the rocks watched, intent.
One of the men noticed the dogs skulking by the net and hurled a stone. They raced away, turned,
crept back. This man was the largest of the group, active and well-formed. As the splashing people
neared the nets the big man looked ahead, saw the gap in the nets and ran along on the shore to pull it
taut. On the cliff above, wolf eyes met human. Wolf teeth made a tiny click.
The fish were foaming in the nets now. The humans closed upon them, hauling at the nets, fish
sluicing and leaping through, dogs splashing in to snap. Shouts, screams, floundering bodies. They
dragged the squirming mass ashore, dropped it to grab at escaping fish. The young giant stood erect,
grinning, biting alternately at a fish in each hand. At his feet children scrambled in the threshing nets. He
gave a loud wordless shout, threw the fish high.
Finally the women dragged the catch away along the shore path to the huts and the river was empty
again. Girl and wolf stretched, lay down unrelaxed. Smoke blew around the bend. If was hot in the rocks
now, out of the wind. Below on the sand fish-parts glittered but no flies appeared. From the cove,
silence; interrupted briefly by a child’s wail. The sun was dropping toward the valley run, shadows
spreading on the river below. The wind followed the sun away.
Presently dusk filled the canyon and the sky turned lilac behind a half-moon. A column of smoke
was rising from the cove. In the stillness voices pealed singly, became a rhythmic chorus underlaid with
pounding. This continued for a time, interspersed with shouts, bursts of shrieking. The smoke column
wavered, gouted sparks. More shrieks, general clamor. The uproar died to grumbles, then to silence.
The rocks ticked in the night chill.
The wolf left the cranny. The girl sighed, remained. Around the bend a dog began to howl, squealed
and was still. The girl toed intricate patterns in a patch of sand. The wolf returned wet-legged, and they
ate and drank. While the moon set they slept.
Before dawn they had left that place and circled back across the river to the side on which they had
entered the valley. The canyon wall was eroded to a tumble here. The two went slowly several times
between shore and rocks as the sky paled. Finally they sat down to wait at the water’s edge behind a
screen of alders. Across the river were the huts.
When light struck into the canyon the girl rose and faced the wolf. Her jacket wrapped her waist,
ended in a wide loop. He caught one tooth in the loop, flicked it free and had the jacket open. Beneath
the jacket she was bare. She stood patiently while he nosed the jacket back across her shoulders like a
cape. Her shoulders were smooth scarless knobs above her small breasts. The cold air puckered her
pink nipples, stirred the little beards of silk in what should have been her armpits.
The wolf was laying the folds of jacket so that they mimicked arms. Satisfied, he jerked his big head
and then began to tug at the flexible waistband of her breeches, drawing them down deftly to expose her
body and upper thighs. As he worked she began to smile, moved. He growled faintly. The wind blew on
her bareness. She leaned against his warm fur. They waited.
Sounds were coming from the thatches across the river. Figures appeared, ambling down to the
shore to stand or squat. Girl and wolf watched an alder grove across the river to one side of the huts.
Presently the foliage was agitated. A man was coming through. Wolf-head nodded; it was the big one.
The man appeared moving familiarly along a sand spit, and stood to urinate.
Carefully the wolf drew back a low branch. The girl took an awkward pace forward, putting her
naked body in full sunlight. The man’s head swung, fixed on her. His body tensed. She gave a low call,
swaying herself.
Muscles surged in the man’s legs, his feet spurned sand. Instantly the branch thrashed back around
her and the wolf was yanking up her breeches, tugging her jacket around. Then they were running, pelting