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

Ori tears the last of the scarf into pieces, smiling horribly, her flat eyes empty. What unreal
memories fill her head?
I say bitterly, "Doing the right thing ... letting me believe I killed my sister!"
"When you rejoin your ancestors, you will find it isn't so. And the means of rejoining them
was made available to you: the completion of your informing atonement."
 But now that atonement never will be completed. I stole Ano and buried her without
Section consent. Maldon Brifjis, of course, does not know this.
Through my pain and anger I blurt, "And what of you, Pek Brifjis? You work with these
criminal healers, aiding them in emptying children like Ori of reality -- "
"I don't work with them. I thought you smarter, Pek. I work against them. And so did Carryl
Walters, which is why he died in Aulit Prison."
"Against them?"
"Many of us do. Carryl Walters among them. He was an informer. And my friend."
Neither of us says anything. Pek Brifjis stares into the fire. I stare at Ori, who has begun to
grimace horribly. She squats on an intricately woven curved rug which looks very old. A reek
suddenly fills the room. Ori does not share with the rest of us the reality of piss closets. She
throws back her head and laughs, a horrible sound like splintering metal.
"Take her away," Pek Brifjis says wearily to the guard, who looks unhappy. "I'll clean up
here." To me he adds, "We can't allow any servants in here with you."
The guard leads away the grimacing child. Pek Brifjis kneels and scrubs at the rug with
chimney rags dipped in water from my carafe. I remember that he collects antique water
carafes. What a long way that must seem from scrubbing shit, from Ori, from Carryl Walters
coughing out his lungs in Aulit Prison, among aliens.
"Pek Brifjis -- did I kill my sister?"
He looks up. There is shit on his hands. "There is no way to be absolutely sure. It is
possible you were one of the experiment subjects from your village. You would have been
drugged in your house, to awake with your sister murdered and your mind altered."
I say, more quietly than I have said anything else in this room, "You will really kill me, let
me decay, and enable me to rejoin my ancestors?"
Pek Brifjis stands and wipes the shit from his hands. "I will."
"But what will you do if I refuse? If instead I ask to return home?"
"If you do that, the government will arrest you and once more promise you atonement -- if
you inform on those of us working to oppose them."
"Not if I go first to whatever part of the government is truly working to end the
experiments. Surely you aren't saying the entire government is doing this ... thing."
"Of course not. But do you know for certain which Sections, and which officials in those
Sections, wish for war with the Terrans, and which do not? We can't be sure. How can you?"
Frablit Pek Brimmidin is innocent, I think. But the thought is useless. Pek Brimmidin is
innocent, but powerless.
It tears my soul to think that the two might be the same thing.
Pek Brifjis rubs at the damp carpet with the toe of his boot. He puts the rags in a lidded jar
and washes his hands at the washstand. A faint stench still hangs in the air. He comes to
stand beside my bed.
"Is that what you want, Uli Pek Bengarin? That I let you leave this house, not knowing
what you will do, whom you will inform on? That I endanger everything we have done in order
to convince you of its truth?"
"Or you can kill me and let me rejoin my ancestors. Which is what you think I will choose,
isn't it? That choice would let you keep faith with the reality you have decided is true, and
still keep yourself secret from the criminals. Killing me would be easiest for you. But only if I
consent to my murder. Otherwise, you will violate even the reality you have decided to