"Carolyn Ives Gilman - The Honeycrafters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Carolyn Ives)

Dubich already regretted having lashed out; it only gave her the excuse to lie. He breathed in and tried to draw on the reserves of patience he had used raising children. Though no child had ever given them the trouble Yannas had.
"You have to give it up, Yannas. If not for yourself, do it for the rest of us. You're the greatest hivekeeper this motherhold has ever had. You may be the greatest one living. And Magwin has made a foolish bargain trusting her life to you."
He told Yannas about Renata then. Yannas watched immobile, her face as complex with shadows as her life was with falsehoods.
"She can't win this contest without your help," Dubich finished.
Yannas was silent a long time. She would not look at Dubich's face. "She was wrong to trust me," she said at last.
"She had reason to. She saved your life. She would never ask for your thanks, but you owe it to her."
"I suppose I do." Yannas' voice was soft, but thick with irony.
Dubich studied her face, searching for a glimmer of love or loyalty. Droning, monotonous music filled the silence--the voice of the fine swarm Yannas had created, first as apprentice, then as assistant, finally as master hivekeeper.
Dubich turned away, defeated. "How is the swarm?" he asked.
"They weathered the last journeypiece well," Yannas said. "One hive is raising a new mother. We will be able to start a new hive soon." Her voice warmed when she spoke of them, as it never did for any mere human. Not even a human who needed her gratitude. If only, Dubich thought desperately, she felt toward us as she feels toward the bees.
"We will have a new mother bee soon, one way or another," he said; the words ached. "You will have to choose sides. I hope you will choose Magwin's."
He waited for an answer, but Yannas said nothing, and he had to leave without knowing her choice.


When Yannas gave out word that the bees were ready to dehive, the whole camp began to stir. Spirits were high; it was the beginning of the human journeycycle as well as the bees'. Soon a procession of wicker litters was winding up the path to the hive tent. A crowd of workers helped shift the heavy hives onto litters, each bound for a preselected site on the plain around them. Yannas stood at the center of the hubbub, passing out directions. For a space around her everything was quiet, as if her presence stilled the chaos and vitality of the day.
She had marked the hive sites carefully in advance, and each pair of workers set off surely over the uneven ground with a sealed hive slung between them. Soon the hives would be scattered to the alpine meadows nestling in sheltered spots amidst the glacial washwater and scree. The nectar from these Dawn-flowers was too earthy for human tastes; but the bees needed it to strengthen them for their long pilgrimage east.
The hive tent was only half empty when Yannas called a halt; the rest of the hives were marked as Renata's. When the crowd had gone, Yannas slung a pack of tools over her shoulder, fastened a pouch of food to her belt, and set off to open the hives. She always did this part alone.
Up out of the river valley, the land was flat as far as the eye could see -- a vast, glacier-scoured plain. A cold wind swept down off the ice from the west, unimpeded by anything but a few solitary boulders. It was not the same place they had come to start the last journey. That place had passed on into morning. This was new land, released only recently from the grip of night. Over their lifetimes, the children in camp might see this spot mature, bear fruit, and pass on into searing day; but they would never live to see it reborn. That was left to their descendants.
Yannas strode like a grim spectre through the rock-and-water world. Her distended shadow leapt from rock to rock like something younger than she. She wore a one-piece suit, the legs tucked into high boots and the neck and cuffs cinched tight to prevent stray bees from entering. Her dark bee-veil was draped shawl-like over her shoulders, but as she neared the first set of hives she made no attempt to draw it over her face.
The hives lay in a valley, sheltered by a snaking ridge of gravel. Yannas checked to make sure each hive entrance faced the low sun, and that the cylinders were firmly placed on the rocky ground, tilting slightly forward so no rain would run inside. Where the tilt didn't satisfy her, she shimmed up the back with a flat piece of shale. Then she cracked open the tops with her pry bar to check the bees' supply of feed honey, noting down hives that were low. Last, she took the netting from over the broad hive mouth and sat down on a nearby rock to watch the bees emerge.
They were tentative at first, unsure of the new world that lay outside their doorway. At last a few began circling the hives on unpracticed wings. When Yannas saw one fly off toward a nearby clump of blooming everweep, she smiled. It transformed the gloomy landscape of her face like sun on a leaden lake.
She had never believed that any human was responsible for rescuing her from the ruins of her past. It was the bees who had done it. They had taught her to stop seeing herself everywhere, and look at the world as they did.
Yannas studied the spot beneath her feet, making herself mentally into a bee. The apparent barrenness of the land was an illusion. It was a human mistake to see nothing here, for humans looked on the wrong scale. It was a world for the small and subtle. In every crack and nook, life had taken hold. Lichen first, then mosses with tiny white flowers, then grasses that grew more down than up. In the silence, Yannas could almost hear the burrowbugs sliding through the thin soil, the roots rustling and sipping water, the earth breathing in, released from the weight of winter.
When she set off toward the next hive site, she no longer stared gloomily at the ground ahead, but breathed the fresh air, head back. She went out of her way to visit a spring-fed pool where a few maiden's-tears bloomed. The names of the Dawn flowers were all sad. Yannas had named some herself, following the tradition.
The second cluster of hives had been carelessly placed, probably by youngsters who knew no better. Yannas set about righting the damage. This time she had to light her smoker to calm the bees in one hive where the comb tubes inside had been jostled from their places.
It was not until she reached the third cluster of hives that she realized she was being followed. Looking up from her work, she saw a shadow move against a faraway rock. Its source was invisible; but it was an old mistake in this country, to hide yourself and forget your shadow.
She sat down near the hives to eat her dinner and think about whoever followed her. She was a long way from the camp. If it was one of the roving barbarians, the hives were her best protection, for they knew and feared the bees. But she guessed it had to do with events in Magwin Ghar's motherhold.
There was a patter of falling gravel to her left. She looked up. Standing with one foot on a nearby boulder was Renata Oblin, one elbow on her raised knee, the other hand on her hip. She looked like the dashing heroine of an old story, ready for anything.
"Are you sitting there out of recklessness or bravado?" she asked. She had some pebbles in one hand, and was working them around, scrape, clack.
"No," Yannas said. She turned back to her brown bread and nuts.
"You're three feet from a hive, and not wearing gloves or veil. I watched you. You didn't even put on the veil when you opened that hive."
"The bees know me. And the stings don't bother me as much as most."
"That's lucky. Most people would be long dead before they could get back to the motherhold if they were swarmed out here."
She came forward, but stopped five paces from Yannas. "I am Renata Oblin. Pardon me if I don't shake your hand."
"I am Yannas." She nodded in Renata's direction, barely polite.
"Yannas No-Name," Renata said. "I know. I heard about you even in Oblin motherhold. Our hivekeepers were in awe of your Sweettooth and Morning Green blends. They used to say you were possessed."
Yannas' jaw muscles clenched as she chewed over the nuances of that statement.
"You should be back taking care of your bees," she said, putting the rest of her dinner back in its pouch. "They'll start to pine if you leave them sitting in the hive tent. They want to be free."
A smile crossed Renata's handsome face. "Offering advice to the enemy? What would Magwin Ghar say?"
"I am saying it for your bees' sake, not yours. Not that you'll listen." Yannas sounded sour and elderly even in her own ears.
"Oh, I will listen," Renata said seriously. "I will listen carefully to whatever you say."
Yannas turned a sharp, skeptical gaze on her. "What do you want?"
"I should think that was obvious. I want you on my side."
There was a long silence. The drone of bees and the distant, everpresent trickle of water were the only sounds in the chill, birdless air.
Renata spoke first. "In the camp, they told me not to try. They said you owed too much to Magwin Ghar. But it seemed to me you had another loyalty as well: to your craft. And I can make it possible for you to do things Magwin Ghar would never dream of."
She threw down her handful of pebbles and walked restlessly around, too full of energy to keep still. "This motherhold is lax; the standards are low. They don't produce nearly as much honey as they could, nor as high quality. It's not a lack of talent, it's a lack of leadership, of drive. I want to organize things more efficiently. I'll give you helpers for the drudgery, so you can concentrate on the creative part. I will improve the processing and distilling so it's equal to your hive culture."
She turned to face Yannas intently. "I want to give you a chance to achieve the recognition you deserve. We can set standards here. You're a brilliant artist working with poor tools. I can give you better ones."
It was like someone had snipped time with a scissors and overlapped the edges, so that Yannas was faced with an earlier version of herself. She could remember how magical those words had been: ambition, achievement, success. She, too, had set out to be the best once, but not at hivekeeping. The bees were a refuge -- an end, not a beginning.
"You've misjudged me," she said. "There is nothing I want to accomplish. I learned long ago that the world never thanks you for doing well. If you raise your head up above the rest, you're only more likely to get kicked in the face."
"That's not true!" Renata said positively. "You've got to have goals. You have to fix your eyes on something, then put every ounce of skill and strength into achieving it. Your success is in your own hands."