"Samuel R. Delany - The Star Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

Once I asked Alegra when she'd first heard of golden, and she came back with this horror story. A lot
were coming back from Tyber-44 cluster with psychic shockтАФthe mental condition of golden is pretty
delicate, and sometimes very minor conflicts nearly ruin them. Anyway, the government that was
sponsoring the importation of micro-micro surgical equipment from some tiny planet in that galaxy, to
protect its interests, hired Alegra, age eight, as a psychiatric therapist. "I'd concretize their fantasies and
make them work 'em through. In just a couple of hours I'd have 'em back to their old, mean, stupid
selves again. Some of them were pretty nice when they came to me." But there was a lot of work for her;
projective telepaths are rare. So they started withholding her drug to force her to work harder, then
rewarding her with increased dosage. "Up till then," she told me, "I might have kicked it. But when I
came away, they had me on double what I used to take. They pushed me past the point where
withdrawal would be fatal. But I could have kicked it, up till then, Vyme." That's right. Age eight.

Oh yeah. The drug was imported by golden from Cancer-p, and most of it goes through the Star-pit.
Alegra came here because illegal imports are easier to come by, and you can get it for just about
nothingтАФif you want it. Golden don't use it. The wind lessened as Ratlit and I started back. Ratlit began
to whistle. In Calle-K the first night lamp had broken so that the level street was a tunnel of black.

"Ratlit?" I asked. "Where do you think you'll be, oh, in say five years?"

"Quiet," he said. "I'm trying to get to the end of the street without bumping into the walls, tripping on
something, or some other catastrophe. If we get through the next five minutes all right, I'll worry about the
next five years." He began whistling again.

"Trip? Bump the walls?"

"I'm listening for echoes." Again he commenced the little jets of music.

I put my hands in my overall pouch and went on quietly while Ratlit did the bat bit. Then there was a
catastrophe. Though I didn't realize it at the time.

Into the circle of light from the remaining lamp at the other end of the street walked a golden.

His hands went up to his face, and he was laughing. The sound skittered in the street. His belt was low on
his belly the way the really down and brokeтАФ

I just thought of a better way to describe him; the resemblance struck me immediately. He looked like
Sandy, my mechanic, who is short, twenty-four years old, muscled like an ape, and wears his worn-out
work clothes even when he's off duty. ("I just want this job for a while, boss. I'm not staying out here at
the Star-pit. As soon as I save up a little, I'm gonna make it back in toward galactic center. It's funny out
here, like dead." He gazes up through the opening in the hangar roof where there are no clouds and no
stars either. "Yeah. I'm just gonna be here for a little while."

"Fine with me, kid-boy."

(That was three months back, like I say. He's still with me. He works hard too, which puts him a cut
above a lot of characters out here. Still, there was something about Sandy . . .) On the other hand
Sandy's face is also hacked up with acne. His hair is always nap short over his wide head, but in these
aspects, the golden was exactly Sandy's opposite, come to think of it. Still, there was something about
the golden . . .