"Dembo, Arinn - Sisterhood Of Skin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dembo Arinn)

ARINN DEMBO

SISTERHOOD OF THE SKIN

*
"Sisterhood of the Skin" is Arinn Dembo's first sale. She attended the Clarion
West Writers' Workshop in 1990, and has written some science fiction criticism.
She's from Seattle, and has two children.

*
"I wrote 'Sisterhood of the Skin,'" she writes, "after absorbing a lot of horror
stories from people who had worked on fishing boats in Alaska. The life of the
merchant seaman is atrociously brutal and dangerous, even in this modern age,
and there is little or no legal protection for men and women working in
international waters-- even less protection than there is for the waters
themselves. I suppose l was trying to capture my sense of commercial fishing as
a continuous state of violence, not only against Nature but against the finer
feelings which make us human."

Ones cut a silkie out of the net today; I came up from the hold to find him
trying to kill it on deck with a length of pipe. The rest of the swing shift
stood around him, giving him a wide berth; their eyes were hollow and black in
the rain. No one wanted to be too near him. He made a broken, high-pitched sound
as he struck, squeals of rage wringing out of him in bursts-- as if it were him
being beaten.

It looked like a female. It made no sound, ribs already broken over vital organs
but nowhere near death -- that flesh is too tough, flexible, packed thick onto
bones like rock. The breasts were swollen. It may have been nursing a calf, down
there somewhere in the black water. The golden pelt was spattered with blood, so
red and dark that it seemed almost purple. Its mammalian blood, based on iron
but thick as gravy, the veins in those sleek, supple bodies are like drain
pipes.

For just a second its eyes caught mine. I drew my gun and shot it, erasing the
eyes, the winged nostrils, the lion's mouth, the misery. Its face was too much
like a woman's -- too much like my own.

Jones looked up at me, frozen in his simian squat with the bloody pipe still in
his hand. He was beyond speech. I had an endless moment to hold the targeting
beam on the center of his chest and wonder if it wouldn't be best to kill him,
drop him over the side and try to cut our losses. His eyes were clear, blue, and
utterly vacant -- a berserker.

In the end it was simply the fact that I wanted to kill him that decided me
against it. I let the barrel of my pistol twitch toward his weapon; he caught
the gesture, looked down stupidly at the bent pipe in his hand, and relaxed his