"Joan D. Vinge - To Bell the Cat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Joan D)

To Bell the Cat by Joan D. Vinge

Another squeal of animal pain reached them from the bubble tent twenty meters
away. Juah-u Corouda jerked involuntarily as he tossed the carved gaming
pieces from the cup, spoiling his throw. "Hell, a triad.... Damn that noise;
it's like fingernails on metal."

"Orr doesn't know the meaning of 'surrender.'" Albe Hyacin-Soong caught up the
cup. "It must be driving him crazy that he can't figure out how those scaly
little rats survive all that radioactivity. How they ever evolved in the
first place - "

"He doesn't know the meaning of the word 'mercy.' " Xena Soong - Hyacin
frowned at her husband, her hands clasping her elbows. "Why doesn't he
anesthetize them?"

"Come on, Xena," Corouda said. "They're just animals. They don't feel pain
like we do."

"And what are any of us, Juah-u, but animals trying to play God?"

"I just want to play squamish," Albe muttered.

Corouda smiled faintly, looking away from Xena toward the edge of the camp. A
few complaints, hers among them, had forced Orr to move his lab tent away from
the rest. Corouda was just as glad. The noises annoyed him, but he didn't
take them personally. Research was necessary; Xena - any scientist - should
be able to accept that. But the bleeding hearts are always with us. No
matter how comfortable a society became, no matter how fair, no matter how
nearly perfect, there was always someone who wanted flas to pick at. Some
people were never satisfied; he was glad he wasn't one of them. And glad he
wasn't married to one of them. But then, Albe always liked a good argument.

"Next you'll be telling me that he doesn't feel anything either!" Xena
pointed.

"Keep your voice down, Xena. He'll hear you. He's right over there. And
don't pull down straw men; he's got nothing to do with this. He's Piper
Alvarian Jary; he's supposed to suffer."

"He's been brainwiped. That's like punishing an amnesiac; he's not the same
man - "

"I don't want to get into that again," Albe said, unconvincingly.

Corouda shook his head, pushed the blond curls back under his peaked cap and
moved further into the shade. They sat cross - legged on the soft, gray -
brown earth with the studied primitivism all wardens affected. He turned his
head slightly to look at Piper Alvarian Jary, sitting on a rock in the sun;
alone as usual, and as usual within summoning range of Hoban Orr, his master.