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

"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