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

bright colors, although not in prison. Terrans, who don't even have neck fur but instead fur on
their heads, which they sometimes cut into fanciful curves -- rather pretty. Terrans are a
little intimidating because of their size. They move slowly. Ano, who had one year at the
university before I killed her, once told me that the Terran's world makes them feel lighter
than ours does. I don't understand this, but Ano was very intelligent and so it's probably true.
She also explained that Fallers, Terrans, and World people are somehow related far back in
time, but this is harder to believe. Perhaps Ano was mistaken.
 Nobody ever thinks Huhuhubs could be related to us. Tiny, scuttling, ugly, dangerous, they
walk on all fours. They're covered with warts. They smell bad. I was glad to see only a few of
them, sticking close together, in the corridor at Aulit.
We all move toward a large room filled with rough tables and chairs and, in the corner, a
trough for the Huhuhubs. The food is already on the tables. Cereal, flatbread, elindel fruit --
very basic, but nutritious. What surprises me most is the total absence of guards. Apparently
prisoners are allowed to do whatever they wish to the food, the room, or each other, without
interference. Well, why not? We aren't real.
I need protection, quickly.
I choose a group of two women and three men. They sit at a table with their backs to the
wall, and others have left a respectful distance around them. From the way they group
themselves, the oldest woman is the leader. I plant myself in front of her and look directly into
her face. A long scar ridges her left cheek to disappear into grizzled neck fur.
"I am Uli Pek Bengarin," I say, my voice even but too low to be heard beyond this group. "In
Aulit for the murder of my sister. I can be useful to you."
She doesn't speak, and her flat dark eyes don't waver, but I have her attention. Other
prisoners watch furtively.
"I know an informer among the guards. He knows I know. He brings things into Aulit for me,
in return for not sharing his name."
Still her eyes don't waver. But I see she believes me; the sheer outrage of my statement
has convinced her. A guard who had already forfeited reality by informing -- by violating
shared reality -- might easily turn it to less pernicious material advantage. Once reality is
torn, the rents grow. For the same reason, she easily believes that I might violate my
supposed agreement with the guard.
"What sort of things?" she says, carelessly. Her voice is raspy and thick, like some hairy
root.
"Letters. Candy. Pel." Intoxicants are forbidden in prison; they promote shared conviviality,
to which the unreal have no right.
"Weapons?"
"Perhaps," I say.
"And why shouldn't I beat this guard's name out of you and set up my own arrangement
with him?"
"He will not. He is my cousin." This is the trickiest part of the cover provided to me by R&A
Section; it requires that my would-be protector believe in a person who has kept enough
sense of reality to honor family ties but will nonetheless violate a larger shared reality. I told
Pek Brimmidin that I doubted that such a twisted state of mind would be very stable, and so a
seasoned prisoner would not believe in it. But Pek Brimmidin was right and I was wrong. The
woman nods.
"All right. Sit down."
She does not ask what I wish in return for the favors of my supposed cousin. She knows. I
sit beside her, and from now on I am physically safe in Aulit Prison from all but her.
Next, I must somehow befriend a Terran.