"Ian R. Macleod - Breathmoss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

Ian R. MacLeod - Breathmoss


BREATHMOSS
by IAN R. MACLEOD


First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, edited by Gardner R. Dozois, May 2002.




1.

In her twelfth standard year, which on Habara was the Season of Soft Rains, Jalila moved across the
mountains with her mothers from the high plains of Tabuthal to the coast. For all of them, the journey
down was one of unhurried discovery, with the kamasheens long gone and the world freshly moist, and
the hayawans rusting as they rode them, the huge flat plates of their feet swishing through purplish-green
undergrowth. She saw the cliffs and qasrs she'd only visited from her dreamtent, and sailed across the
high ridges on ropewalks her distant ancestors had built, which had seemed frail and antique to her in
her worried imaginings, but were in fact strong and subtle; huge dripping gantries heaving from the mist
like wise giants, softly humming, and welcoming her and her hayawan, whom she called Robin, in
cocoons of effortless embrace. Swaying over the drop beyond into grey-green nothing was almost like
flying.
The strangest thing of all in this journey of discoveries was that the landscape actually seemed to rise
higher as they descended and encamped and descended again; the sense of up increased, rather than that
of down. The air on the high plains of Tabuthal was rarefied -- Jalila knew that from her lessons in her
dreamtent; they were so close to the stars that Pavo had had to clap a mask over her face from the
moment of her birth until the breathmoss was embedded in her lungs. And it had been clear up there, it
was always clear, and it was pleasantly cold. The sun shone all day hard and cold and white from the
blue blackness, as did a billion stars at night, although Jalila had never thought of those things as she ran
amid the crystal trees and her mothers smiled at her and occasionally warned her that, one day, all of this
would have to change.
And now that day was upon her, and this landscape -- as Robin, her hayawan, rounded the path
through an urrearth forest of alien-looking trees with wrinkled brown trunks and soft green leaves, and
the land fell away, and she caught her first glimpse of something far and flat on the horizon -- had never
seemed so high.




-=*=-




Down on the coast, the mountains reared behind them and around a bay. There were many people
here -- not the vast numbers, perhaps, of Jalila's dreamtent stories of the Ten Thousand and One Worlds,

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