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

My family wouldn't help him.
Below, people were gathering about the block. Nobody wanted to crowd the Interface while he was working. But now
Dennis's mother climbed over the rim.
As the dust-covered woman was taking in the sight of her son in the ambulance, the Interface said, "This is it,
Madlain. It's a metal box, densely packed with leaves of something organic. Must be books. They'll have to be
recorded without opening the box, though. It's older than our scales can estimate."
Those gathered below heard most of what he said, and a loud shouting went up from the humans: a cheer. It hurt
Arshel's hearing as she climbed into the hopper beside the doctors.
Madlain gestured the Interface to silence and forced her way into the hopper, saying, "I'll be back to attend to it later.
Meanwhile, Dorsan, let my husband know."
Heavily laden, the hopper barely cleared the far rim of the pit, landing with a bounce beside the humans' health station.
Quickly, Dennis was taken to the venom treatment unit. It rarely happened that a human was attacked by a kren, but
the humans feared it so greatly that they drilled their medical teams in antivenom routine.
As she waited in the sparely appointed alcove for news, Arshel was grateful for the humans' phobia. Soon, Madlain
Lakely joined her, taking a chair across the tiny room from her. For a while, Arshel kept her head down, eyes lowered to
her lap in the human signal that she did not wish to intrude or be intruded upon.
But finally, Madlain asked, "You're Arshel Holtethor of whom Dennis was telling me this morning?"
She spoke the Vrashin Island dialect with a mainland ac-cent. Arshel summoned her courage to raise her head and
meet the woman's eyes. There was the intelligence there that she had always respected, but she sensed no
accep-tance.
The human pinched up her face. "I don't blame you for the strike, Arshel. It happens in bhirhir."
The grief and fear clutched at Arshel and made her breath tremble in her throat. But no venom answered her emotions.
The human's eyes traveled to the closed door at the far end of the hallway. It was a hard, square hallway with sharp,
square doors and dim yellow lighting. "Arshel, do you want to tell me how it happened? Was it before or after Dennis
set off the find signal? Did the signal startle you?"
That stung. "I may be an islander, Ms. Lakely, but I'm not a primitive." ,
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply anything like that. I just want to know what happened to my son. Arshel, he's my
only child. And I haven't mourned him. IтАФmy hus-band and I don't yet know how to welcome you. But we won't cast
you both out."
Something melted inside Arshel. "I'm sorry. I'm being hostile. I can't speak now. I feel too threatened, too afraid." She
had learned that she had to say things like that in words to make humans understand, had to treat them as if their wits
were impaired. "I mean no dis-courtesy."
"It seems when kren is involved with human, most of the conversation consists either of apologies or attacks," said
Madlain with a faint smile. "Dennis has been telling me for weeks that he wanted to have a go at that wall. His intuition
has made the find even our expensive Interface couldn't. Now he's lying in there at the edge of death, and you and I
can't even talk about it without hurting each other."
At last the human fell silent, and Arshel wrapped herself in the tension of her emotions. Years later she would look
back on Madlain Lakely's words and realize that this was the moment when she had surrendered to fate. But at the
time, all she knew was her personal agony: Have I com-mitted myself to bhirhir so deeply that 1 can't survive without
him?
Her thoughts were cut off by the hunger cramps that inevitably followed such a full voiding as Dennis had given her.
She was doubled over and gasping by the time the door to Dennis's room opened and the two kren from the
ambu-lance came out.
The doctor came to her, saying, "We're ready for you now. Afterward, there will be a feeding."
Now, she thought, knowing that she had to raise venom and self-express it to save Dennis's life.
As they helped her to her feet, one on each side of her, the doctor added, "We could send an ambulance for your
surmotherтАФ"
"No!" she said, gritting her teeth. "I'm old enough to do this myself."
Madlain rose. "We're not yet immune to her, but maybe I can help."
The kren doctor said, "It would be too dangerous for you."