"Greg Egan - Oceanic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

rendered equally hospitable, and just as women and men were made indistinguishable in the sight of
God, so were Freelanders and Firmlanders. (Some commentators insisted that this was literally
true: God chose to blind Herself to where we lived, and whether or not we'd been born with a
penis. I thought that was a beautiful idea, even if I couldn't quite grasp the logistics of it.)
I'd heard that certain obscure sects taught that half the Angels had actually become embodied
as a separate people who could live in the water and breathe beneath the surface, but then God
destroyed them because they were a mockery of Beatrice's death. No legitimate church took this
notion seriously, though, and archaeologists had found no trace of these mythical doomed cousins.
Humans were humans, there was only one kind. Freelanders and Firmlanders could even intermarry --
if they could agree where to live.
When I was fifteen, Daniel became engaged to Agnes from the Prayer Group. That made sense:
they'd be spared the explanations and arguments about the Drowning that they might have faced with
partners who weren't so blessed. Agnes was a Freelander, of course, but a large branch of her
family, and a smaller branch of ours, were Firmlanders, so after long negotiations it was decided
that the wedding would be held in Ferez, a coastal town.
I went with my father to pick a hull to be fitted out as Daniel and Agnes's boat. The
breeder, Diana, had a string of six mature hulls in tow, and my father insisted on walking out
onto their backs and personally examining each one for imperfections.
By the time we reached the fourth I was losing patience. I muttered, "It's the skin
underneath that matters." In fact, you could tell a lot about a hull's general condition from up
here, but there wasn't much point worrying about a few tiny flaws high above the waterline.
My father nodded thoughtfully. "That's true. You'd better get in the water and check their
undersides."
"I'm not doing that." We couldn't simply trust this woman to sell us a healthy hull for a
decent price; that wouldn't have been sufficiently embarrassing.
"Martin! This is for the safety of your brother and sister-in-law."
I glanced at Diana to show her where my sympathies lay, then slipped off my shirt and dived
in. I swam down to the last hull in the row, then ducked beneath it. I began the job with perverse
thoroughness, running my fingers over every square nanoradian of skin. I was determined to annoy
my father by taking even longer than he wanted -- and determined to impress Diana by examining all
six hulls without coming up for air.
An unfitted hull rode higher in the water than a boat full of furniture and junk, but I was
surprised to discover that even in the creature's shadow there was enough light for me to see the
skin clearly. After a while I realized that, paradoxically, this was because the water was
slightly cloudier than usual, and whatever the fine particles were, they were scattering sunlight
into the shadows.
Moving through the warm, bright water, feeling the love of Beatrice more strongly than I had
for a long time, it was impossible to remain angry with my father. He wanted the best hull for
Daniel and Agnes, and so did I. As for impressing Diana ... who was I kidding? She was a grown
woman, at least as old as Agnes, and highly unlikely to view me as anything more than a child. By
the time I'd finished with the third hull I was feeling short of breath, so I surfaced and
reported cheerfully, "No blemishes so far!"
Diana smiled down at me. "You've got strong lungs."
All six hulls were in perfect condition. We ended up taking the one at the end of the row,
because it was easiest to detach.

****

Ferez was built on the mouth of a river, but the docks were some distance upstream. That
helped to prepare us; the gradual deadening of the waves was less of a shock than an instant