"Ursula K. LeGuin - Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

serene, the Surveyors wandering like picknickers over sunny plains of violet filicaliformes, spoke softly to
each other. They knew their voices broke a silence of a thousand million years, the silence of wind and
leaves, leaves and wind, blowing and ceasing and blowing again. They talked softly; but being human,
they talked.
"Poor old Osden," said Jenny Chong Bio and Tech, as she piloted a helijet on the North Polar
Quadrating run. "All that fancy hi-fi stuff in his brain and nothing to receive. What a bust."
"He told me he hates plants," Olleroo said with a giggle.
"You'd think he'd like them, since they don't bother him like we do."
"Can't say I much like these plants myself," said Porlock, looking down at the purple undulations of
the North Circumpolar Forest "All the same. No mind. No change. A man alone in it would go right off
his head."
"But it's all alive," Jenny Chong said. "And if it lives, Osden hates it."
"He's not really so bad," Olleroo said, magnanimous.
Porlock looked at her sidelong and asked, "You ever slept with him, Olleroo?" Olleroo burst into
tears and cried, "You Terrans are obscene!"
"No she hasn't," Jenny Chong said, prompt to defend. "Have you, Porlock?"
The chemist laughed uneasily: ha, ha, ha. Flecks of spittle appeared on his mustache.
"Osden can't bear to be touched," Olleroo said shakily. "I just brushed against him once by accident
and he knocked me off like I was some sort of dirty тАж thing. We're all just things, to him,"
"He's evil," Porlock said in a strained voice, startling the two women. "Hell end up shattering this
team, sabotaging it, one way or another. Mark my words. He's not fit to live with other people!" They
landed on the North Pole. A midnight sun smoldered over low hills. Short, dry, greenish-pink bryoform
grasses stretched away in every direction, which was all one direction, south. Subdued by the incredible
silence, the three Surveyors set up their instruments and set to work, three viruses twitching minutely on
the hide of an unmoving giant
Nobody asked Osden along on runs as pilot or photographer or recorder, and he never volunteered,
so he seldom left base camp. He ran Harfex's botanical taxonomic data through the onship computers,
and served as assistant to Eskwana, whose job here was mainly repair and maintenance. Eskwana had
begun to sleep a great deal, twenty-five hours or more out of the thirty-two-hour day, dropping off in the
middle of repairing a radio or checking the guidance circuits of a helijet. The Coordinator stayed at base
one day to observe. No one else was home except Poswet To, who was subject to epileptic fits;
Mannon had plugged her into a therapy-circuit today in a state of preventive catatonia. Tomiko spoke
reports into the storage banks, and kept an eye on Osden and Eskwana. Two hours passed.
"You might want to use the 860 microwaldoes in sealing that connection," Eskwana said in his soft,
hesitant voice.
"Obviously!"
"Sorry. I just saw you had the 840's thereтАФ"
"And will replace them when I take the 860's out. When I don't know how to proceed, Engineer, IтАЩll
ask your advice."
After a minute Tomiko looked round. Sure enough, there was Eskwana sound asleep, head on the
table, thumb in his mouth. "Osden."
The white face did not turn, he did not speak, but conveyed impatiently that he was listening.
"You can't be unaware of Eskwana's vulnerability."
"I am not responsible for his psychopathic reactions."
"But you are responsible for your own. Eskwana is essential to our work here, and you're not. If you
can't control your hostility, you must avoid him altogether."
Osden put down his tools and stood up. "With pleasure!" he said in his vindictive, scraping voice.
"You could not possibly imagine what it's like to experience Eskwana's irrational terrors. To have to
share his horrible cowardice, to have to cringe with him at everything!"
"Are you trying to justify your cruelty towards him? I thought you had more self-respect." Tomiko