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

And the government is supposed to protect us from unreal slime, ha, what a joke. Your bolt is
a nonstandard size."
"Is it?" I say.
"Yes. Costs you extra."
I nod. Behind the open rear door of the shop, two little girls play in a thick stand of
moonweed.
"We should kill all the aliens," the repairer says. "No shame in destroying them before they
corrupt us."
"Eurummmn," I say. Informers are not supposed to make themselves conspicuous with
political debate. Above the two children's heads, the moonweed bends gracefully in the wind.
One of the little girls has long brown neck fur, very pretty. The other does not.
"There, that bolt will hold fine. Where you from?"
"Rakfit Sarloe." Informers never name their villages.
She gives an exaggerated shudder. "I would never visit the capital. Too many aliens. They
destroy our participation in shared reality without a moment's thought! Three and eight,
please."
I want to say No one but you can destroy your own participation in shared reality, but I
don't. Silently I pay her the money.
She glares at me, at the world. "You don't believe me about the Terrans. But I know what I
know!"
I ride away, through the flowered countryside. In the sky, only Cap is visible, rising on the
horizon opposite the sun. Cap glows with a clear white smoothness, like Ano's skin.
The Terrans, I am told, have only one moon. Shared reality on their world is, perhaps,
skimpier than ours: less curved, less rich, less warm.
Are they ever jealous?


Aulit prison sits on a flat plain inland from the South Coast. I know that other islands on
World have their own prisons, just as they have their own governments, but only Aulit is used
for the alien unreal, as well as our own. A special agreement among the governments of World
makes this possible. The alien governments protest, but of course it does them no good. The
unreal is the unreal, and far too painful and dangerous to have running around loose. Besides,
the alien governments are far away on other stars.
Aulit is huge and ugly, a straight-lined monolith of dull red stone, with no curves anywhere.
An official from R&A meets me and turns me over to two prison guards. We enter through a
barred gate, my bicycle chained to the guards', and I to my bicycle. I am led across a wide
dusty yard toward a stone wall. The guards of course don't speak to me; I am unreal.
My cell is square, twice my length on a side. There is a bed, a piss pot, a table, and a
single chair. The door is without a window, and all the other doors in the row of cells are
closed.
"When will the prisoners be allowed to be all together?" I ask, but of course the guard
doesn't answer me. I am not real.
I sit in my chair and wait. Without a clock, it's difficult to judge time, but I think a few
hours pass totally without event. Then a gong sounds and my door slides up into the ceiling.
Ropes and pulleys, controlled from above, inaccessible from inside the cell.
The corridor fills with illusionary people. Men and women, some with yellowed neck fur and
sunken eyes, walking with the shuffle of old age. Some young, striding along with that
dangerous mixture of anger and desperation. And the aliens.
I have seen aliens before, but not so many together. Fallers, about our size but very dark,
as if burned crisp by their distant star. They wear their neck fur very long and dye it strange