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

something cold on my face, because every minute or so it would start to burn.

Another bunch of kids grabbed me, shouting, "Da, Da, the ani-worts, Da!" and tried to pull me over.

First I took two steps with them. Then I just swung my arms out. I didn't make a sound. But I put my
head down and barreled against the plastic wall. Kids screamed. Aluminum snapped; the plastic cracked
and went down. My boots were still on, and I kicked and kicked at red earth and sand. Shade palms
went down and the leaves tore under my feet. Crystal plants broke like glass rods beneath a piece of
plastic. A swarm of lizards flittered up around my head. Some of the red was Sigma, some was what
burned behind my face. I remember I was still shaking and watching water run out of the broken lake
over the sand, then soak in so that the wet tongue of sand expanded a little, raised just a trifle around the
edge. Then I looked up to see the kids coming back down the beach, crying, shouting, afraid and
clustered around Antoni's ma. She walked steadily toward meтАФsteady because she was a woman and
they were children. But I saw the same fear in her face. Antoni was on her shoulder. Other grown-ups
were coming behind her.
Antoni's ma was a biologist, and I think she had suggested the ecologarium to the kids in the first place.
When she looked up from the ruin I'd made, I knew I'd broken something of hers too.

An odd expression got caught in the features of herтАФI remember it oh so beautifulтАФface, with
compassion alongside the anger, contempt alongside the fear. "Oh, for pity's sake, Vyme," she cried, not
loudly at all. "Won't you ever grow up?"

I opened my mouth, but everything I wanted to say was too big and stayed wedged in my throat

"Grow up?" Antoni repeated and reached for a lizard that buzzed his head. "Everything stop growing up,
now." He looked down again at the wreck I'd made. "All broken. Everything get out."

"He didn't mean to break it," she said to the others for me, then knifed my gratitude with a look. "We'll
put it back together."

She put Antoni on the sand and picked up one of the walls.

After they got started, they let me help. A lot of the plants were broken. And only the ani-worts who'd
completed metamorphosis could be saved. The flying lizards were too curious to get far away, so
weтАФthey netted them and got them back inside. I guess I didn't help that much. And I wouldn't say I
was sorry.

They got just about everything back except the sloths.

We couldn't find them. We searched for a long time, too.

The sun was down so they should have been all right. They can't negotiate the sand with any speed so
couldn't have reached the jungle. But there were no tracks, no nothing. We even dug in the sand to see if
they'd buried themselves. It wasn't till more than a dozen years later I discovered where they went.

For the present I accepted Antoni's mildly adequate, "They just must of got out again."

Not too long after that I left the procreation group. Went off to work one day, didn't come back. But like
I said to Antoni, you either grow or die. I didn't die.