"Orson Scott Card - Songmaster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

After only a few minutes Esste released them. "What do we do?" asked one of the children.
"What you want," answered Esste.
So they- gingerly waded at the edge of the pool, while the driver watched to make sure no one drowned. Few of them noticed when Esste left; only Ansset followed her.
She led him, though she gave no sign she knew'he was following, to a path leading up the steep slope to the top of the falls. Ansset watched her carefully, to see where she was going. She climbed. He climbed after. It was not easy for him. His arms and legs were still clumsy with childhood, and he grew tired. There were hard places, where Esste had only to step up, while Ansset had to clamber over rises half as high as he was. But he did not let Esste out of his sight, and she, for her part, did not go too quickly for him. She had gathered her gown for the climb, and Ansset looked curiously at her legs. They were white and spindly, and her ankles looked too thin to hold her up. Yet she was nimble enough as they climbed. Ansset had never thought of her as having legs before. Children had legs, but masters and teachers rushed along with gowns brushing the floor. The sight of legs, just like a chip's,
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|.
."
made Ansset wonder if Esste was like the girls in the shower and toilet. He imagined her squatting over the trench. It was a sight that he knew was forbidden, yet in his mind he violated even good manners and stared and stared.
And came face to face with Esste at the top of the hill.
He was startled, and showed it. She only murmured a few notes of reassurance. You were meant to be here, her song said. Then she looked out beyond the hill, and Ansset looked after her. Behind them was forest in rolling hills, but here a lake spread out to lap the edges of a bowl of hills. Trees grew right to the edge, except for a few clearings. The lake was not large, as lakes go, but to Ansset it was all the water in the world. Only a few hundred meters away, the lake poured over a lip of rock to make the waterfall. But here there was no hint of the violence of the fall. Here the lake was placid, and waterbirds skimmed and dipped and swam and dived, crying out from time to time.
Esste questioned him with a melody, and Ansset answered, "It's large. Large as the sky."
"That is not all you should see, Ansset, my son," she said to him. "You should see the mountains around the lake, holding it in."
"What makes a lake?"
"A river comes into this valley, pouring in the water. It has no place to go, so it fills up. Until some spills out at the waterfall. It can fill no deeper than the lowest point, Ansset, this is Control."
This is Control. Ansset's young mind struggled to make the connection.
"How is it Control, Ansset?"
"Because it is deep," Ansset answered.
"You are guessing, not thinking."
"Because," said Ansset, "it is all held in everywhere except one place, so that it only comes out a little at a time."
"Closer," said Esste. Which meant he was wrong. Ansset looked at the lake, trying for inspiration. But all he could see was a lake.
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"Stop looking at the lake, Ansset, if the lake tells you nothing."
So Ansset looked at the trees, at the birds, at the hills. He looked all around the hills. And he knew what Esste wanted him to know. "The water pours out of the low place."
"And?" Not enough yet?
"If the low place were higher, the lake would be deeper."
"And if the low place were lower?"
"There wouldn't be a lake."
And Esste broke off the conversation. Or rather, changed languages, because now she sang, and the song exulted a little. It was low and it was not loud, but it spoke, without words, of joy; of having found after long searching, of having given a gift carried far too long; of having, at last, eaten when she thought never to eat again. I hungered for you, and you are here, said her song.
And Ansset understood all the notes of her song, and all that lay behind the notes, and he, too, sang. Harmony was not taught to Bells, but Ansset sang harmony. It was wrong, it was only countermelody, it was dissonant to Esste's song, but it was nevertheless an augmentation of her joy, and where a mere teacher, with less Control, might have been overcome by Ansset's echo of the deepest parts of her song, Esste had Control enough to channel the ecstasy through her song. It became so powerful, and Ansset was so receptive to it, that it overcame him, and he sobbed and clung to her and still tried to sing through his tears.
She knelt beside him and held him and whispered to him, and soon he slept. She talked to him in his sleep, told him things far beyond his comprehension, but she was laying pathways through his mind. She was building secret places in his mind, and in one of them she sang the love song, sang it so that at a time of great need it would sing back to him and he would remember, and be filled.
When he woke, he remembered nothing of having lost Control; nor did he remember Esste speaking to him. But he reached out and took her hand, and she led him down
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the hill It felt right to him to hold her hand, though such familiarity was forbidden between children and teachers, partly because his body had vague memories of holding the hand of a woman whom he completely trusted, and partly because he knew, somehow, that Esste would not mind.
O Kya-Kya was a Deaf. At the age of eight she had still not progressed beyond the Groan level. Her Control was weak. Her pitch was uncertain. It was not lack of native abilityЧthe seeker who found her had not made a mistake. She simply could not pay attention well enough. She did not care.
Or so they said. But she cared very much. Cared when the children her age and a year younger and a year younger than that passed her by. All were kind to her and few despaired, because it was well known that some sang later than others. She cared even more when she was gently told that there was no point in going on. She was a Deaf, not because she could not hear, but because, as her teacher told her, "Hearing, you hear not." And that was it. A different kind of teacher, different duties, different children. There weren't that many Deafs, but there were enough for a class. They learned from the best teachers Tew could provide. But they learned no music.
The Songhouse takes care of all its children, she thought often, sometimes gratefully, sometimes bitterly. I am taken care of. Taught to work by being given duties in the Songhouse. Taught science and history and languages and I'm damned good at it. Outside, outside they would consider me gifted. But here I'm a Deaf. And the sooner I leave the better.
She would leave soon. She was fourteen. Only a few months left. At fifteen she would be out, with a comfortable stipend and the doors to a dozen universities open
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to her. The money would continue until she was twenty-two. Later, if she needed. The Songhouse took care of its children,
But there were still those few months, and her duties were interesting enough. She worked with security, checking the warning and protective devices that made sure the Songhouse stayed isolated from the rest of Tew. Such devices had not always been needed, in the old days. There had even been a time when the Songmaster in the High Room ruled all the world. But it was still less than a century since the outsiders had tried to storm the Songhouse in a silly dispute over a pirate who wanted the Songhouse's reputed great wealth. And now the security devices, which took a year to patrol. The duty had taken her around the perimeter, a journey longer than circling the world, and all by skooter, so that she was alone in the forests and deserts and seacoasts of the Songhouse lands.
Today she was checking the monitoring devices in the Songhouse itself. In a way it made her feel superior, to know what none of the children and few of the masters and teachers knewЧthat the stone was not impenetrable, that, in fact, it was heavily strung with wires and tubes, so that what seemed to be a rambling, primitive stone relic was potentially as modern as anything on Tew. Possession of the wiring diagrams gave her information that would surprise any of the less-informed singers. Yet whenever she dwelt on her pride at having inside knowledge, she forced herself to remember that she was only allowed the knowledge so young because she was completely outside all the discipline and study of the Songhouse. She was a DeafЧshe could know secrets because she would never sing and so she didn't matter.
That was her frame of mind when she entered the High Room. She knocked brusquely because she was feeling upset. No answer. Good, the old Songmaster, Nniv, wasn't in. She pushed open the door. The High Room was freezing, with all the shutters open to the wintry wind. It was insane to leave the place like thisЧwho could work here? Instead of going to the panels where the monitors -*vere
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hidden, she went to the shutters of the nearest window, leaned out to catch them, and found herself looking down forever, it seemed, to the next roof below her. She hadn't realized how high she really was. On the east side, of course, the Songhouse was higher, so the stairs up to the High Room were not so terribly long. But she was high, and the height fascinated her. What would it be like to fall? Would she feel it like flying, with the exhilaration of the skooter rushing down a hillside? Or would she really be afraid?
She stopped herself with one leg over the sill, her arms poised to thrust her out. What am I doing? The shock of realization was almost enough to throw her forward, out the window. She caught herself, gripped the sides of the window, forced herself to slowly pull her leg back inside, withdraw from the window, and finally kneel, leaning her head against the lip of rock at the base of the window. Why did I do that? What was I doing?
I was leaving the Songhouse.
The thought made her shudder. Not that way. I will not leave the Songhouse that way. Leaving the Songhouse will not be the end of my life.
She did not-believe it. And, not believing, she gripped the stone and wanted not to ever let go.
The room was cold. It made her numb, motionless as she was, and the whine of the wind through the spaces in the roof and the rush of wind through the windows made her afraid in a new way. As if someone were watching her.
She turned. There was no one. Just the bundles of clothing and books and stone benches and a foot sticking out from under one of the bunches of clothing and the foot was blue and she went over to it and discovered that this bundle of clothing was the misshapen, incredibly thin body of Nniv, who was dead, frozen in the wind from the winter outside. His eyes were open, and he stared at the stone in front of his face. Kya-Kya whimpered, but then reached down and pulled on his hip, as if to wake him. He rolled onto his back, but an arm stuck up in the