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

I make a bargain with Ano's corpse, still lying in curled-finger grace on the bed across from
mine. Her beautiful brown hair floats in the chemicals of the coffin. I used to covet that hair
desperately, when we were very young. Once I even cut it all off while she slept. But other
times I would weave it for her, or braid it with flowers. She was so pretty. At one point, when
she was still a child, she wore eight bid rings, one on each finger. Two of the bids were in
negotiation between the boys' fathers and ours. Although older, I have never had a single bid.
Did I murder her?
My bargain with her corpse is this: If the Reality & Atonement Section releases me and Ano
because of my work in Aulit Prison, I will seek no further. Ano will be free to join our
ancestors; I will be fully real. It will no longer matter whether or not I killed my sister, because
both of us will again be sharing in the same reality as if I had not. But if Reality & Atonement
holds me unreal still longer, after all I have given them, I will try to find this 'Maldon Pek
Brifjis.'
I say none of this aloud. The guards at Aulit Prison knew immediately when Pek Walters
died, inside a closed and windowless room. They could be watching me here, now. World has
no devices to do this, but how did Pek Walters know so much about a World man working with
a Terran science experiment? Somewhere there are World people and Terrans in partnership.
Terrans, as everyone knows, have all sorts of listening devices we do not.
I kiss Ano's coffin. I don't say it aloud, but I hope desperately that Reality & Atonement
releases us. I want to return to shared reality, to the daily warmth and sweetness of
belonging, now and forever, to the living and dead of World. I do not want to be an informer
any more.
Not for anyone, even myself.


The message comes three days later. The afternoon is warm and I sit outside on my stone
bench, watching my neighbor's milkbeasts eye her sturdily fenced flowerbeds. She has new
flowers that I don't recognize, with blooms that are entrancing but somehow foreign -- could
they be Terran? It doesn't seem likely. During my time in Aulit Prison, more people seem to
have made up their minds that the Terrans are unreal. I have heard more mutterings, more
anger against those who buy from alien traders.
Frablit Pek Brimmidin himself brings the letter from Reality and Atonement, laboring up the
road on his ancient bicycle. He has removed his uniform, so as not to embarrass me in front of
my neighbors. I watch him ride up, his neck fur damp with unaccustomed exertion, his gray
eyes abashed, and I know already what the sealed message must say. Pek Brimmidin is too
kind for his job. That is why he is only a low-level messenger boy all the time, not just today.
These are things I never saw before.
'You are too trusting for be informer, Pek Bengarin.'
"Thank you, Pek Brimmidin," I say. "Would you like a glass of water? Or pel?"
"No, thank you, Pek," he says. He does not meet my eyes. He waves to my other neighbor,
fetching water from the village well, and fumbles meaninglessly with the handle of his bicycle.
"I can't stay."
"Then ride safely," I say, and go back in my house. I stand beside Ano and break the seal
on the government letter. After I read it, I gaze at her a long time. So beautiful, so
sweet-natured. So loved.
Then I start to clean. I scrub every inch of my house, for hours and hours, climbing on a
ladder to wash the ceiling, sloshing thick soapsuds in the cracks, scrubbing every surface of
every object and carrying the more intricately-shaped outside into the sun to dry. Despite my