"Vonda N. McIntyre - Little Faces" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

left in Zorargul had been wiped out by death.

By murder.

The walls and floor of her living space changed again as her ship re-created her living room. She liked it
plain but luxurious, all softness and comfort. The large circular space lay beneath a transparent dome. It
was a place for one person alone. She patted the floor with her bloodstained hand.

"Thank you," she said.

"True," her ship whispered into her mind.

Its decisions often pleased her and anticipated her wishes. Strange, for ships and people seldom
conversed. When they tried, the interaction too easily deteriorated into misunderstanding. Their
consciousnesses were of different types, different evolutionary lineages.

She rose, lacking her usual ease of motion. Anger and pain and grief drained her, and exhaustion
trembled in her bones.

She carried Zorargul's body down through the ship, down into its heart, down to the misty power plant.
Blood, her own and her companion's, spattered and smeared her hands, her stomach, her legs, the
defending teeth or withdrawn crowns of her remaining companions, and Zorargul's pale and flaccid
corpse. Its nerve ends dried to silver threads. Expulsion had reduced the testicles to wrinkled empty
sacs.

Water ran in streams and pools through the power plant's housing, cold as it came in, steaming too hot to
touch as it led away. Where steam from the hot pool met cold air, mist formed. Yalnis knelt and washed
Zorargul's remains in the cold pool. When she was done, a square of scarlet ship silk lay on the velvety
floor, flat and new where it had formed. She wrapped Zorargul in its shining folds.

"Good-bye," she said, and gave the small bundle tenderly to the elemental heat.

A long time later, Yalnis made her way to the living space and climbed into the bath, into water hot but
not scalding. The bath swirled around her, sweeping away flecks of dried blood. She massaged the
wound gently, making sure the nerve roots were cleanly ejected. She let the expulsion lump alone, though
it was already hardening.

The remaining companions opened their little faces, protruding from the shelter of her body. They peered
around, craning themselves above her skin, glaring at each other and gnashing their teeth in a great show,
then closing their lips, humming to attract her attention.

She attended each companion in turn, stroking the little faces, flicking warm drops of water between their
lips, quieting and calming them, murmuring, "Shh, shh." They felt no sympathy for her loss, no grief for
Zorargul, only the consciousness of opportunity. She felt a moment of contempt for the quartet, each
member jostling for primacy.

They are what they are, she thought, and submerged herself and them in the bath, drawing their little faces
beneath the surface. They fell silent, holding their breaths and closing their eyes and mouths, reaching to
draw their oxygen as well as their sustenance from her blood. A wash of dizziness took her; she breathed
deep till it passed.