"Williamson, Jack - 02 - The Humanoid Touch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

He wanted to ask why anybody ever went to Malili. It looked too far and cold for people. He thought it might be better just to let the humanoids keep it, but he didn't say so now because Nurse Vesh had stopped looking at him. She was leaning with her face against the wall, her lean body shaking. He tiptoed away, feeling sorry for her.

His father was Crewman Ryn Kyrone. A tall, brown man who stood very straight hi his black uniform and worked in a hidden back room where Keth couldn't go. The steel door stayed shut, with a quick little red-blinking light to remind his father when it wasn't locked.

Sometimes his father slept in the room and brought Nurse Vesh quota points for his breakfast, but he was more often away on Lifecrew business. He never talked about that, or much about anything else.

Not even about the scar, a long pale seam that zigzagged down from his hair and split across his jaw. It changed color when he was angry, and he was often angry. When Keth asked for more than his quota. When Keth couldn't tie his boots correctly. When Keth was afraid to go to bed, because he knew he would have dreadful dreams about the humanoids.

Keth knew his father must have been hurt on Malili, perhaps in a terrible fight with the humanoids. They must be very fierce and cruel if they could hurt a man so strong. Once he asked Nurse Vesh if his father was afraid. Her face grew tight, and her pale eyes squinted blankly past him.

"Brave enough," she muttered. "But he knows the humanoids."

The year he was six, she sent him to the gym every morning. The other kids seemed strange at first, because they laughed and ran and sometimes whispered when the leader wanted quiet. They weren't afraid of anything, and they weren't nice to him.

The leader tried to scold them once, explaining that Keth didn't know the games because he was born on Malili, but that only made things worse. They called him "moonbaby" and mocked the way he talked. One day a larger boy pushed him.

"You'll be sorry!" His voice was shaking, but he didn't cry. "My father-" He thought of something better. "The humanoids will get you!"

"Humanoids, ha!" The boy stuck out his tongue. "A silly old story."

"My nurse says—"

"So baby has a nurse!" The boy came closer^ ready to push him again. "My Dad was an engineer in the Zone, and he says there're no humanoids there. He says the rockrust would stop them."

Limping home through the cold tunnels, he wondered if that could be true. What if Nurse Vesh had made up the humanoids, just to frighten him? He found her in her room, reading a queer old printbook.

"You aren't to fight." She frowned at the blood on his cheek. "Or did you win? Your father will be angry if you ran."

"I fell, but it doesn't hurt at all." He watched her carefully. "I was talking to a boy. He says there are no humanoids—"

"He's a fool."

Her lips shut tight, and she opened the book to show him a humanoid. The picture was flat and strange, but the thing in it looked real. More human than machine, it was sleek and black and bare, as graceful as a dancer. He thought its lean face seemed kinder than hers.

"It isn't ugly." He studied it, wishing he knew how to read the golden print on its black chest. "It looks too nice to be bad."

"They pretend to be good." She took the old book from him and slammed it shut, as if the humanoid had been a bug she wanted to smash. The puff of dust made him sneeze. "If you ever fall for any of their tricks, you'll be another fool."

He wondered how a machine could trick anybody, but she didn't say. He wanted to ask about rockrust and how it could stop the humanoids, but she didn't like to talk about Malili. She scrubbed his cheek and gave him his calorie quota, which was never enough, and made him do his lessons before he went to bed.

The next summer he took a recycle route, pulling a little cart to pick up waste metal and fiber. The tunnels were cold, and most of the tokens he earned had to be saved for his winter thennosuit. But one day he found a bright black ball almost the size of his fist, so shiny it made a little image of his face. It rolled out of a trash bin, along with the bits of a broken dish and a worn-out boot.

"A dragon's egg." Nurse Vesh shook her skinny head when he showed it to her. "Bad luck to touch. Better throw it back in the bin."

It looked too wonderful to be thrown away, and he asked his father if it would hatch.

"Not very likely." His father took it, frowning. "Ten million years old. But you've no business with it, Skipper. It must be missing from some museum. I'll see about returning it."

His father carried it back to that always-locked room and never spoke about it again. Wondering, he used to search the moontime sky for the Dragon. It was the sun's sister star, and perhaps the dragons had flown from nests on its queer far planets to leave their eggs here on Kai.