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

it. For a needle slides into my elbow, at the inner pulse where Maldon Brjfis has been holding
it, and the room slides away as easily as Ano into her grave.


A bed, soft and silky, beneath me. Rich wall hangings. The room is very warm. A scented
breeze whispers across my bare stomach. Bare? I sit up and discover I am dressed in the
gauzy skirt, skimpy bandeau, and flirting veil of a prostitute.
 At my first movement, Pek Brifjis crosses from the fireplace to my bed. "Pek. This room
does not allow sound to escape. Do not resume screaming. Do you understand?"
I nod. His bodyguard stands across the room. I pull the flirting veil from my face.
"I am sorry about that," Pek Brifjis says. "It was necessary to dress you in a way that
accounts for a bodyguard carrying a drugged woman into a private home without raising
questions."
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.