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

through. The brief respite allowed them to remember just how much they hated Screwtop, and just how
impossible it was to escape.
Since she could not be with both her friends, she preferred complete solitude. For Kylis it was almost
instinctive to make certain no one could follow her. Unfolding the cuffs of her boots, she protected her
legs to halfway up her thighs. She did not seal the boots to her shorts because of the heat.
The floor of the forest dipped and rose gently, forming wide hollows where the rain collected. Kylis
stepped into one of the huge shallow pools and waded across it, walking slowly, feeling ahead with her
toe before she put her foot down firmly. The mist and shadows, the reddish sunlight, and the glassy
surface created illusions that concealed occasional deep pits. Where the water lay still and calm,
microscopic parasites crawled out of the earth and swarmed. They normally reproduced inside small
fishes and primitive amphibians, but they were not particular about their host. They would invade a human
body through a cut or abrasion, causing agonizing muscle lesions. Sometimes they traveled slowly to the
brain. The forest was no place to fall into a water hole.
Avoiding one deep spot, Kylis reached the far bank and stepped out onto a slick outcropping of rock
where her footprints would not show. Where the stone ended and she reentered the frond forest, the
ground was higher and less sodden, although the misty rain still fell continuously.
The ferns thinned, the ground rose steeply, and Kylis began to climb. At the top of the hill the air
stirred, arid the vegetation was not so thick. Kylis found some edible shoots, picked them, and peeled
them carefully. The pulp was spicy and crunchy. The juice, pungent and sour, trickled down her throat.
She picked a few more stalks and tied the small bundle to her belt. Those that were sporing she was
careful not to disturb. Edible plants no longer grew near camp; in fact, nothing edible grew close enough
to Screwtop to reach on any but the free day.
Redsun traveled upright in its circular orbit; it had no seasons. The plants had no sun-determined clock
by which to synchronize their reproduction, so a few branches of any one plant or a few plants of any
one species would spore while the rest remained asexual. A few days later a different random set would
begin. It was not a very efficient method of spreading traits through the gene pool, but it had sufficed until
people came along and destroyed fertile plants as well as spored-out ones. Kylis, who had noticed in her
wanderings that evolution ceased at the point when human beings arrived and began to make their
changes, tried not to cause that kind of damage.
A flash of white, a movement, caught the edge of her vision. She froze, wishing the hallucinations away
but certain they had come back. White was not a natural color in the frond forest, not even the muddy
pink that passed for white under Redsun's enormous star. But no strange fantasy creatures paraded
around her; she heard no furious imaginary sounds. Her feet remained firmly on the ground, the warm fine
rain hung around her, the ferns drooped with their burden of droplets. Slowly Kylis turned until she faced
the direction of the motion. She was not alone.
She moved quietly forward until she could look through the black foliage. What she had seen was the
uniform of Screwtop, white boots, white shorts, white shirt for anyone with a reason to wear it. One of
the other prisoners sat on a rock, looking out across the forest, toward the swamp. Tears rolled slowly
down her face, though she made no sound. Miria.
Feeling only a little guilty about invading her privacy, Kylis watched her, as she had been watching her
for some time. Kylis thought Miria was a survivor, someone who would leave Screwtop without being
broken. She kept to herself; she had no partners. Kylis had admired her tremendous capacity for work.
She was taller than Kylis, bigger, potentially stronger, but clearly unaccustomed to great physical labor.
For a while she had worn her shirt tied up under her breasts, but like most others she had discarded it
because of the heat.
Miria survived in the camp without using other people or allowing herself to be used. Except when
given a direct order, she acted as if the guards simply did not exist, in effect defying them without giving
them a reasonable excuse to punish her. They did not always wait for reasonable excuses. Miria received
somewhat more than her share of pain, but her dignity remained intact.
Kylis retreated a couple of steps, then came noisily out of the forest, giving Miria a few seconds to