"Gilman, Carolyn Ives - Honeycrafters, The2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Carolyn Ives)

"Who will judge?" Renata asked, narrow-eyed. It was a highly unusual proposal.
"The honey buyers of Erdrum," Magwin said.
"Will you give me the right to pick from your swarm?"
"They are all good bees. You may pick if you please."
"And what of the honeycrafters -- the hivekeepers, blenders, and refiners?"
"Persuade as many to follow you as you can."
A smile flashed across Renata's face, as if this challenge were to her liking. "And equipment?"
"We will share fairly."
"This is not a bad proposal, old woman," Renata said. "It is realistic."
"Then you accept, little girl?"
"I do."
The listeners looked troubled, for the decision would be on their shoulders, in a sense. Each one would have to choose whom to support. It would be the strangest journey a motherhold had ever taken.
Renata rose to leave, but before reaching the tent flap she paused. "What about the loser?" she said.
Magwin Ghar hesitated. There was only one proper answer. "It must be an honorable death."
To die by one's own bees was the only way to be sure of honor. It was a painful death, but natural.
For the first time that night, Renata looked less than sure. With a slightly exaggerated confidence she said, "Very well."
When all the witnesses were gone, Magwin turned to Dubich. "Ah, she's strong and brave, Dubich. But she can't match me in wits."
Dubich moved slowly around the tent, gathering the horn cups the visitors had left. Her plan gave him a deep foreboding.
When he didn't answer, Magwin said, "Dubich? Are you criticizing me?"
"I didn't say a word," he said.
"No," she said. "You just freeze the air with your silence. What is your problem with my plan?"
"This contest will set the young against the old," he said. "The youth of the motherhold will want to follow her."
"So? I will have wisdom, experience, and skill on my side."
"She will have energy and creativity on hers. And a new mother bee. She has a chance of winning, Magwin."
Magwin grinned. "It would not be a contest if she didn't."
Dubich wanted to smash the cups and roar. He held it back. It was not the right way. He must be clear-minded, clever, and quiet if he was to help her. She must never know. He picked up a cloak.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To the extraction tent," he said.
But he lied. He was going to start fighting for her.


On the edge of camp, remote from traveled paths, lay the hive tent. At the start of each journey, the bees were kept there till they acclimated to Dawn, resetting their biological rhythms and starting their life cycles over. It was a dark and buzzing place. The tall ceramic cylinders were stacked in shadowy ranks, so thick they left only a small circle open in the center. There, alone as usual, Hivekeeper Yannas No-Name paced the claustrophobic circle of her skull.
Normally, the quiet music of the bees calmed her, drew her from her thoughts. She pressed her palms, then her cheek, against the side of a hive, to feel the soft vibration of their humming. On good days, she could sense their love radiating out, washing her clean of past. But not today. She mouthed a silent profanity at herself. Her life was a rotten tooth, existing only to cause her pain. The hive circle, her last refuge, her cocoon, had trapped her in an empty round of ritual self-delusions.
She picked up a metal bar and pried loose the lid of the nearest hive. Inside, it was dark, crawling with buzzing shapes, like the memories inside her head. Her skin prickled, overactive nerves fighting for her attention. She reached in, picked a bee at random from the comb, and took it to her table, where a candle burned.
The bee was a healthy worker, sleek and yellow. It was half the size of her thumb, and a vestige of caution made her wonder if it were too large for her purpose. With a shrug of careless self-riddance, she rolled up her sleeve, then placed the bee over the prominent blue vein near the elbow. Her forearm was pocked with old red puncture marks.
She took a sliver of wood from the tangle of gray hair behind her ear and bent forward to tease the bee. At first it was quiet, sluggish with cold. When at last it raised its unsheathed stinger in warning, she aimed a threatening jab at its head. It sank its barb into her arm.
She clenched her teeth, enjoying the pain. Her hand twitched in spasms as the muscles convulsed. Her face grew slick with sweat. The bee was trying to withdraw its stinger, but the barbs prevented it; it thrashed about, its last throes pumping out all that remained in its venom sac. At last the stinger ripped from its body and it fell twitching to the floor.
The vein stood out, deep blue all up her arm. She panted for breath, her heart racing unevenly. In another person, a sting so severe would have caused convulsions. Yannas clenched her teeth to keep from emitting a sound as the poison spread. If there was no seizure, the lancing pain would wear away; and as it did, the gnawing void inside her would fade. She would be able to hear the bees sing to her again.
There was a footstep outside; someone was coming. Yannas quickly rolled down her sleeve and flicked the dead bee into the shadows. She turned away from the entry to seem busy and hide the trembling of her hands.


Dubich Rhud stood for a moment holding up the tent flap to let the sunrise light in. He watched Yannas' tall, lean form moving restlessly among the shadows. "Have you heard?" he asked.
Yannas turned. Her face was flushed; angular brows, nose, and cheekbones jutted out from the gaunt, obscure landscape of her face. "Heard what?" she said too alertly.
Dubich frowned suspiciously and crossed the tent. He seized the hivekeeper's arm and bared it to the candle light. The stinger was still embedded in the skin. With an exasperated oath, Dubich took a clip from his cloak and used it as a tweezers to pull the barb out, careful not to touch it himself. At last he looked at Yannas' eyes. They were glassy, bright, pain-free. Dubich's pent-in anger erupted, and he slapped Yannas in the mouth.
"Damn you! I don't care what you do to yourself, but it's Magwin's life you're playing with now. She has trusted your loyalty to save her. God, what a delusion! Her secret weapon, her genius -- nothing but a wretched addict. If Renata knew, she would laugh her sides out."
The hivekeeper backed away, startled, fingering her face. Her flush was gone; she was clear and cold now. "It's not as if you didn't know."
"You promised to cut down."
"I have," Yannas said; but Dubich could tell it was one of her many lies. He and Magwin had gotten used to them over the years.
It was seven journeys since they had come across her in the Summerlands, lying in a roadside ditch, a skeleton wrapped in skin. She had been dehydrated, near death, but when she came to consciousness in one of their tents it was not water she asked for, but sinnom. Then they had known the fault lay with one of the motherholds. For sinnom was a kind of honey -- dangerous, addictive, forbidden, and fabulously valuable. Someone, lured by wealth, had perverted their bees into distillers of liquid death.
Magwin had still been new as holdmother then. Partly from a keen sense of honor, partly from rough kindness, she had adopted Yannas and sworn that she would turn the evil act of some unknown beekeeper into good. No one had ever lived to give up sinnom; but coached by Magwin, Yannas had done it. The bee venom had been the key: it dulled the craving, yet brought no pleasure itself, only pain. Seven journeys had passed, and each one had taken two journeys' worth of life from Yannas, yet the grip of the old addiction failed to fade.