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

reality."
"One more thing, before you agree, Pek Bengarin." Pek Brimmidin is figeting again. "The
suspect is a Terran."
I have never before informed on a Terran. Aulit Prison, of course, holds those aliens who
have been judged unreal: Terrans, Fallers, the weird little Huhuhubs. The problem is that even
after thirty years of ships coming to World, there is still considerable debate about whether
any aliens are real at all. Clearly their bodies exist; after all, here they are. But their thinking is
so disordered they might almost qualify as all being unable to recognize shared social reality,
and so just as unreal as those poor empty children who never attain reason and must be
destroyed.
Usually we on World just leave the aliens alone, except of course for trading with them.
The Terrans in particular offer interesting objects, such as bicycles, and ask in return
worthless items, mostly perfectly obvious information. But do any of the aliens have souls,
capable of recognizing and honoring a shared reality with the souls of others? At the
universities, the argument goes on. Also in market squares and pel shops, which is where I
hear it. Personally, I think aliens may well be real. I try not to be a bigot.
I say to Pek Brimmidin, "I am willing to inform on a Terran."
He wiggles his hand in pleasure. "Good, good. You will enter Aulit Prison a Capmonth before
the suspect is brought there. You will use your primary cover, please."
I nod, although Pek Brimmidin knows this is not easy for me. My primary cover is the truth:
I killed my sister Ano Pek Bengarin two years and eighty-two days ago and was judged unreal
enough for perpetual death, never able to join my ancestors. The only untrue part of the
cover is that I escaped and have been hiding from the Section police ever since.
"You have just been captured," Pek Brimmidin continues, "and assigned to the first part of
your death in Aulit. The Section records will show this."
Again I nod, not looking at him. The first part of my death in Aulit, the second, when the
time came, in the kind of chemical bondage that holds Ano. And never ever to be freed --
ever. What if it were true? I should go mad. Many do.
"The suspect is named 'Carryl Walters.' He is a Terran healer. He murdered a World child, in
an experiment to discover how real people's brains function. His sentence is perpetual death.
But the Section believes that Carryl Walters was working with a group of World people in
these experiments. That somewhere on World there is a group that's so lost its hold on reality
that it would murder children to investigate science."
For a moment the room wavers, including the exaggerated swooping curves of Pek
Brimmidin's ugly sculptures. But then I get hold of myself. I am an informer, and a good one. I
can do this. I am redeeming myself, and releasing Ano. I am an informer.
"I'll find out who this group is," I say. "And what they're doing, and where they are."
Pek Brimmidin smiles at me. "Good." His trust is a dose of shared reality: two people
acknowledging their common perceptions together, without lies or violence. I need this dose.
It is probably the last one I will have for a long time.
How do people manage in perpetual death, fed on only solitary illusion?
Aulit Prison must be full of the mad.


Traveling to Aulit takes two days of hard riding. Somewhere my bicycle loses a bolt and I
wheel it to the next village. The woman who runs the bicycle shop is competent but mean,
the sort who gazes at shared reality mostly to pick out the ugly parts.
"At least it's not a Terran bicycle."
"At least," I say, but she is incapable of recognizing sarcasm.
"Sneaky soulless criminals, taking us over bit by bit. We should never have allowed them in.