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

but the base of the problem seems to be this: as the nature of space and time are relative to the
concentration of matter in a given area of the continuum, the nature of reality itself operates by the same,
or similar laws. The averaged mass of all the stars in our galaxy controls the 'reality' of our microsector of
the universe. But as a ship leaves the galactic rim, 'reality' breaks down and causes insanity and eventual
death for any crew, even though certain mechanical lawsтАФthough not allтАФappear to remain, for reasons
we don't understand, relatively constant. Save for a few barbaric experiments done with psychedelics at
the dawn of spatial travel, we have not even developed a vocabulary that can deal with 'reality' apart
from its measurable, physical expression. Yet, just when we had to face the black limit of intergalactic
space, bright resources glittered within. Some few of us whose sense of reality has been shattered by
infantile, childhood, or prenatal trauma, whose physiological orientation makes life in our interstellar
society painful or impossibleтАФnot all, but a few of these golden . . ." at which point there was static, or
the gentleman coughed, ". . . can make the crossing and return."

The name golden, sans noun, stuck.

Few was the understatement of the millennium. Slightly less than one human being in thirty-four thousand
is a golden. A couple of people had pictures of emptying all mental institutions by just shaking them out
over the galactic rim. Didn't work like that. The particular psychosis and endocrine setup was remarkably
specialized. Still, back then there was excitement, wonder, anticipation, hope, admiration in the word:
admiration for the ones who could get out.

"Golden?" Ratlit said when I asked him. He was working as a grease monkey out here in the Star-pit
over a Poloscki's. "Born with the word. Grew up with it. Weren't no first time with me. Though I
remember when I was about six, right after the last of my parents was killed, and I was hiding out with a
bunch of other lice in a broke-open packing crate in an abandoned freight yard near the ruins of Helios
on Creton VIIтАФthat's where I was born, I think. Most of the city had been starved out by then, but
somebody was getting food to us. There was this old crookback character who was hiding too. He used
to sit on the top of the packing crate and bang his heels on the aluminum slats and tell us stories about the
stars. Had a couple of rags held with twists of wire for clothes, missing two fingers off one hand; he kept
plucking the loose skin under his chin with those grimy talons. And he talked about them. So I asked,
'Golden what, sir?' He leaned forward so that his face was like a mahogany bruise on the sky, and
croaked, "They've been out, I tell you, seen more than even you or I. Human and inhuman, kid-boy,
mothered by women and fathered by men, still they live by their own laws and walk their own ways!"
Ratlit and I were sitting under a street lamp with our feet over the Edge where the fence had broken. His
hair was like breathing flame in the wind, his single earring glittered. Star-flecked infinity dropped away
below our boot soles, and the wind created by the stasis field that held our atmosphere downтАФwe call it
the "world-wind" out here because it's never cold and never hot and like nothing on any worldтАФwhipped
his black shirt back from his bony chest as we gazed on galactic night between our knees. "I guess that
was back during the second Kyber war," he concluded.

"Kyber war?" I asked. "Which one was that?"

He shrugged. "I just know it was fought over possession of couple of tons of di-allium, that's the
polarized element the golden brought back from Lupe-galaxy. They used y-adna ships to fight itтАФthat's
why it was such a bad war. I mean worse than usual."

"Y-adna? That's a drive I don't know anything about."

"Some golden saw the plans for them in a civilization in Magellanic-p."