"Kress, Nancy - The Flowers of Aulit Prison" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

A private home. I guess that this is the rich widow's house by the sea. A room that does not allow sound to escape. A needle unlike ours: sharp and sure. Brain experiments. "Skits-oh-fren-ia."
I say, "You work with the Terrans."
"No," he says. "I do not."
"But Pek Walters..." It doesn't matter. "What are you going to do with me?"
He says, "I am going to offer you a trade."
"What sort of trade?"
"Information in return for your freedom."
And he says he does not work with Terrans. I say, "What use is freedom to me?" although of course I don't expect him to understand that. I can never be free.
"Not that kind of freedom," he says. "I won't just let you go from this room. I will let you rejoin your ancestors, and Ano."
I gape at him.
"Yes, Pek. I will kill you and bury you myself, where your body can decay."
"You would violate shared reality like that? For me?"
His purple eyes deepen again. For a moment, something in those eyes looks almost like Pek Walters's blue ones. "Please understand. I think there is a strong chance you did not kill Ano. Your village was one where...subjects were used for experimentation. I think that is the true shared reality here."
I say nothing. A little of his assurance disappears. "Or so I believe. Will you agree to the trade?"
"Perhaps," I say. Will he actually do what he promises? I can't be sure. But there is no other way for me. I cannot hide from the government all the years until I die. I am too young. And when they find me, they will send me back to Aulit, and when I die there they will put me in a coffin of preservative chemicals...
I would never see Ano again.
The healer watches me closely. Again I see the Pek Walters look in his eyes: sadness and pity.
"Perhaps I will agree to the trade," I say, and wait for him to speak again about the night Ano died. But instead he says, "I want to show you something."
He nods at the bodyguard who leaves the room, returning a few moments later. By the hand he leads a child, a little girl, clean and well-dressed. One look makes my neck fur bristle. The girl's eyes are flat and unseeing. She mutters to herself. I offer a quick appeal for protection to my ancestors. The girl is unreal, without the capacity to perceive shared reality, even though she is well over the age of reason. She is not human. She should have been destroyed.
"This is Ori," Pek Brifjis says. The girl suddenly laughs, a wild demented laugh, and peers at something only she can see.
"Why is it here?" I listen to the harshness in my own voice.
"Ori was born real. She was made this way by the scientific brain experiments of the government."
"Of the government! That is a lie!"
"Is it? Do you still, Pek, have such trust in your government?"
"No, but..." To make me continue to earn Ano's freedom, even after I had met their terms...to lie to Pek Brimmidin...those offenses against shared reality are one thing. The destruction of a real person's physical body, as I had done with Ano's (had I?) is another, far far worse. To destroy a mind, the instrument of perceiving shared reality...Pek Brifjis lies.
He says, "Pek, tell me about the night Ano died."
"Tell me about this...thing!"
"All right." He sits down in a chair beside my luxurious bed. The thing wanders around the room, muttering. It seems unable to stay still.
"She was born Ori Malfisit, in a small village in the far north -- "
"What village?" I need desperately to see if he falters on details.
He does not. "Gofkit Ramloe. Of real parents, simple people, an old and established family. At six years old, Ori was playing in the forest with some other children when she disappeared. The other children said they heard something thrashing toward the marshes. The family decided she had been carried off by a wild kilfreit -- there are still some left, you know, that far north -- and held a procession in honor of Ori's joining their ancestors.
"But that's not what happened to Ori. She was stolen by two men, unreal prisoners promised atonement and restoration to full reality, just as you were. Ori was carried off to Rafkit Sarloe, with eight other children from all over World. There they were given to the Terrans, who were told that they were orphans who could be used for experiment. The experiments were ones that would not hurt or damage the children in any way."
I look at Ori, now tearing a table scarf into shreds and muttering. Her empty eyes turn to mine, and I have to look away.
"This part is difficult," Pek Brifjis says. "Listen hard, Pek. The Terrans truly did not hurt the children. They put ee-lek-trodes on their heads...you don't know what that means. They found ways to see which parts of their brains worked the same as Terran brains and which did not. They used a number of tests and machines and drugs. None of it hurt the children, who lived at the Terran scientific compound and were cared for by World childwatchers. At first the children missed their parents, but they were young, and after a while they were happy."
I glance again at Ori. The unreal, not sharing in common reality, are isolated and therefore dangerous. A person with no world in common with others will violate those others as easily as cutting flowers. Under such conditions, pleasure is possible, but not happiness.
Pek Brifjis runs his hand through his neck fur. "The Terrans worked with World healers, of course, teaching them. It was the usual trade, only this time we received the information and they the physical reality: children and watchers. There was no other way World could permit Terrans to handle our children. Our healers were there every moment."
He looks at me. I say, "Yes," just because something must be said.
"Do you know, Pek, what it is like to realize you have lived your whole life according to beliefs that are not true?"
"No!" I say, so loudly that Ori looks up with her mad, unreal gaze. She smiles. I don't know why I spoke so loud. What Pek Brifjis said has nothing to do with me. Nothing at all.
"Well, Pek Walters knew. He realized that the experiments he participated in, harmless to the subjects and in aid of biological understanding of species differences, were being used for something else. The roots of skits-oh-free-nia, misfiring brain sir-kits -- " He is off on a long explanation that means nothing to me. Too many Terran words, too much strangeness. Pek Brifjis is no longer talking to me. He is talking to himself, in some sort of pain I don't understand.
Suddenly the purple eyes snap back to mine. "What all that means, Pek, is that a few of the healers -- our own healers, from World -- found out how to manipulate the Terran science. They took it and used it to put into minds memories that did not happen."
"Not possible!"
"It is possible. The brain is made very excited, with Terran devices, while the false memory is recited over and over. Then different parts of the brain are made to...to recirculate memories and emotions over and over. Like water recirculated through mill races. The water gets all scrambled together...No. Think of it this way: different parts of the brain send signals to each other. The signals are forced to loop together, and every loop makes the unreal memories stronger. It is apparently in common use on Terra, although tightly controlled."
Sick brain talks to itself.
"But -- "
"There are no objections possible, Pek. It is real. It happened. It happened to Ori. The World scientists made her brain remember things that had not happened. Small things, at first. That worked. When they tried larger memories, something went wrong. It left her like this. They were still learning; that was five years ago. They got better, much better. Good enough to experiment on adult subjects who could then be returned to shared reality."
"One can't plant memories like flowers, or uproot them like weeds!"
"These people could. And did."
"But -- why?"
"Because the World healers who did this -- and they were only a few -- saw a different reality."