"Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Molt Brother" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

was behind that wall. She had convinced Dennis of it, but he had not been able to convince his parents, who ran the
dig. Yet it could do no harm for her to begin the long task today. She was good for little else at the moment.

She looked around again for Dennis, but he was still nowhere in sight. He had to help her express her venom before
the tightness drove her to strike someone. She couldn't ask her surmother to do it for her anymore.
She climbed to the top of a huge, rectangular block that made a nice working platform near the top of the wall and then
sat down on the rock, folding her legs under her. She began to peel the wall away, recording after each pass of the
sifter and watching carefully for any sign of an emerg-ing artifact. At intervals, she took specimens of the rock and put
them in the recorder for analysts. She dug out a large chip to save for display and had the recorder label it.
The work was boring and repetitive but soothing. Arshel let her mind drift out of focus, dreaming of what it would be
like to make a big find and have everyone come run-ning over to congratulate her. Would they like her any better then,
she wondered? Probably not, but it would be fun, anyway.
"Arshel?" called a deep human voice.
Startled, she dropped the molecular sifter as a spasm gripped her throat; her jaw dropped as her fangs swung out.
At the edge of her vision, his bare arm moved, and she struck. Her fangs sank deep into the human flesh, venom
pumping through them in quick, satisfying spurts. He snatched his arm away, clutching at the elbow to cut off the flow
of blood. Thick yellow venom dripped from her fangs.
"Arshel, you've raised true-venom!"
Pride and delight lit Dennis's eyes as his own blood mingled with her venom in the dust. But she couldn't con-trol the
voiding spasms. Weak, she sank to her knees, ter-rified that she had killed her bhirbir.
Shaking, his hand sought her venom sack to express her as a bhirhir should, just as they'd practiced when she raised
prevenom.
At last her sack was empty. He hadn't spared a drop of her first venom from which to make a serum. Stunned, she
watched her molt brother scuffing at the dusty rock to wipe out all sign of the venom stain there so that her first
venom would be joined forever to the earth itself. In the distance, she heard the warble of the humans' emergency
hopper. But all she could think was that her molt brother was giving his life for a custom that held no meaning for him.
This was the man her surmother had urged her to kill тАФand she had killed him.
Panting, he noticed the still-operating sifter and scram-bled to turn it off, knocking the recorder over but ignoring it. It
was pointed at the hole the sifter had made.
The sifter fell from his grasp, and as his knees buckled, he laughed. "Look at that! My father will think you're a better
Lakely than I am!"
As his eyes closed, her paralysis broke, and she caught him and eased him to the ground. Without looking, she
rummaged in her toolbox and picked the first signal gun that came to hand, firing it into the air.
A great puff of white smoke blossomed over her headтАФ the find signal. All work stopped in the pit as everyone
converged on her. But the hopper arrived first, its ground effect dissipating the smoke as it touched down beside
them. Two humans and a kren jumped out of the ambu-lance, going right to Dennis's side. Another human ap-peared
and then climbed over the rim of the building block they were on: Dorsan, ' the Interface. Of course, she thought. He'd
seen and called the ambulance via computer hookup.
Arshel spared him only a glance, anxiously watching the doctors work over Dennis as if there were still a chance that
he might live. They snapped a portable respirator around his chest and injected a general antivenom into his heart. In
moments they'd rigged a blood exchanger and strapped him onto a stretcher.
Meanwhile, the Interface was examining the venom stain on the rock. He picked up the recorder she'd dropped and
pointed it at the hole in the rock with an absent look that meant that he was in touch with the computer that the
recorder was feeding.
As they were lifting Dennis into the ambulance, the kren doctor stopped to say, "I saw what you let him do to you as
we approached."
His tone was so carefully neutral, she knew that he was revolted. She forced herself to meet his gaze straight on. "We
had sworn bhirhir. It was my first venom. I couldn't help it."
He glanced at the hopper where they were securing the stretcher. "Come, ride with us. If he survives the afternoon, it
will be only because of a specific made from your venom or that of your family."