"Delany, Samuel R - The Einstein Intersection 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

At the other end I stuck my head out and looked down at the upturned faces of the Bloi triplets. They were standing in a patch of light from the roof.
2-Bloi rubbed his nose with the back of his fist and sniffed.
"Oh," 1 -Bloi said. "You were up there."
"More or less." I jumped down beside them.
"Damn! " 3-Bloi said. "What happened to you?" I was speckled with bull's eye, scratched, bruised, and limping.
"Come on," I said. "Which way is out?"
We were only around the corner from the great cave-in. We joined Lo Hawk on the surface.
He stood (remember, he had a cracked rib that nobody was going to find out about till the next day) against a tree with his arms folded. He raised his eyebrows to ask me the question he was waiting with.
"Yeah," I said. "I killed it. Big deal." I was sort of tired.
Lo Hawk shooed the kids ahead of us back to the village. As we tromped through the long weeds, suddenly we heard stems crash down among themselves.
I almost sat down right there.
It was only a boar. His ear could have brushed my elbow. That's all.
"Come on." Lo Hawk grinned, raising his crossbow.
We didn't say anything else until after we had caught and killed the pig. Lo Hawk's powered shaft stunned it, but I had to hack it nearly in half before it would admit it was dead. After el toro? Easy. Bloody to the shoulders, we trudged back finally, through the thorns, the hot evening.
The head of the boar weighed fifty pounds. Lo Hawk lugged it on his back. We'd cut off all four hams, knotted them together, and I carried two on each shoulder, which was another two hundred and seventy pounds. The only way we could have gotten the whole thing back was to have had Easy along. We'd nearly reached the village when he said, "La Dire noticed that business with Friza and the animals. She's seen other things about you and others in the village."
"Huh? Me?" I asked. "What about me?"
"About you, Friza, and Dorik the kage-keeper."
"But that's silly." I'd been walking behind him. Now I drew abreast. He glanced across the tusk. "You were all born the same year."
"But we're all-different."

Lo Hawk squinted ahead, then looked down. Then he looked at the river. He didn't look at me.
"I can't do anything like the animals or the pebble." "You can do other things. Le Dorik can do still others." He still wasn't looking at me. The sun was lowering behind copper crested hills. The river was brown. He was silent. As clouds ran the sky, I dropped behind again, placed the meat beside me, and fell on my knees to wash in the silted water.
Back at the village I told Carol if she'd dress the hams she could have half my share. "Sure," but she was dawdling over a bird's nest she'd found. "In a minute." "And hurry up, huh?"
"All right. All right. Where are you in such a rush to?" "Look, I will polish the tusks for you and make a spearhead for the kid or something if you will just keep off my back!"
"Well, I-look, it's not your kid anyway. It's-" But I was sprinting towards the trees. I guess I must have still been upset. My legs sprint pretty fast.
It was dark when I reached the kage. There was no sound from behind the fence. Once something blundered against the wire, whined. Sparks and a quick shadow. I don't know which side it came from. No movement from Le Dorik's shack. Maybe Dorik was staying inside the kage on some project. Sometimes they mated in there, even gave birth. Sometimes the offspring were functional. The Bloi triplets had been born in the kage. They didn't have too much neck and their arms were long, but they were quick, bright ten-year-olds now. And 2-Bloi and 3-Bloi are almost as dexterous with their feet as I am. I'd even given Lo 3-Bloi a couple of lessons on my blade, but being a child he preferred to pick fruit with his brothers.
After an hour in the dark, thinking about what went into the kage, what came out, I went back to the village, curled up on the haystack behind the smithy and listened to the hum from the power-shack until it put me to sleep.
At dawn I unraveled, rubbed night's grit out of my eyes, and went to the corral. Easy and Little Jon got there a few minutes after. "Need any help with the goats this morning?"
Little Jon put his tongue in his cheek. "Just a second," he said and went off into the corner.
Easy shuffled uncomfortably.
Little Jon came back. "Yeah," he said. "Sure we need help." Then he grinned. And Easy, seeing his grin, grinned too.
Surprise! Surprise, little ball of fear inside me! They're smiling! Easy hoisted up the first bar of the wooden gate, and the goats bleated forward and put their chins over the second rung. Surprise!
"Sure," Easy said. "Of course we need you. Glad to have you back!" He cuffed the back of my head and I swiped at his hip and missed. Little Jon pulled out the other rung, and we chased the goats across the square, out along the road, and then up the meadow. Just like before. No, not just.
Easy said it first, when the first warmth pried under the dawn chill. "It's not just like before, Lobey. You've lost something."
I struck a dew shower from low willow fronds and wet my face and shoulders. "My appetite," I said. "And maybe a couple of pounds."

"It isn't your appetite," Little Jon said, coming back from a tree stump. "It's something different."
"Different?" I repeated. "Say, Easy, Little Jon, how am I different?"
"Huh?" Little Jon asked. He flung a stick at a goat to get its attention. Missed. I picked up a small stone that happened underfoot. Hit it. The goat turned blue eyes on me and galumphed over to see why, got interested in something else halfway over and tried to eat it. "You got big feet," Little Jon said.
"Naw. Not that," I said. "La Dire had noticed something different about me that's important; something different about me the same way there was about... Friza."
"You make music," Easy said.
I looked at the perforated blade. "Naw,"' I said. "I don't think it's that. I could teach you to play. That's another sort of being different than she's looking for. I think."
Late that afternoon we brought the goats back. Easy invited me to eat and I got some of my ham and we attacked Little Jon's cache of fruit. "You want to cook?"
"Naw," I said.
So Easy walked down to the corner of the power-shack and called towards the square, "Hey, who wants to cook dinner for three hard-working gentlemen who can supply food, entertainment, bright conversation- No, you cooked dinner for me once before. Now don't push, girls! Not you either. Whoever taught you how to season? Uh-uh, I remember you, Strychnine Lizzy. O.K. Yeah, you. Come on."
He came back with a cute, bald girl. I'd seen her around but she'd just come to the village. I'd never talked to her and I didn't know her name. "This is Little Jon, Lobey, and I'm Easy. What's your name again?"

"Call me Nativia."
No, I'd never talked to her before. A shame that situation had gone on for twenty-three years. Her voice didn't come from her larynx. I don't think she had one. The sound began a whole lot further down and whispered as out from a cave with bells.
"You can call me anything you like," I said, "as much as you want."