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

wipe away her tears if she wanted to. But when Kylis stopped, pretending to be surprised at finding
another person so near, Miria simply turned toward her.
"Hello, Kylis."
Kylis went closer. "Is anything wrong?" That was such a silly question that she added, "I mean, is there
anything I can do?"
 Miria's smile erased the lines of tension in her forehead and revealed laugh lines Kylis had never
noticed before. "No," Miria said. "Nothing anyone can do. But thank you."
"I guess I'd better go."
"Please don't," Miria said quickly. "I'm so tired of being alone-- " She cut herself off and turned away,
as if she were sorry to have revealed so much of herself. Kylis knew how she felt. She sat down nearby.
Miria looked out again over the forest. The fronds were a soft reddish black. The marsh trees were
harsher, darker, interspersed with gray patches of water. Beyond the marsh, over the horizon, lay an
ocean that covered all of Redsun except the large inhabited North Continent and the tiny South Continent
where the prison camp lay.
Kylis could see the ugly scar of the pits where the crews were still drilling, but Miria had her back half
turned and she gazed only at unspoiled forest.
"It could all be so beautiful," Miria said.
"Do you really think so?" Kylis thought it ugly-- the black foliage, the dim light, the day too long, the
heat, no animals except insects that did not swim or crawl. Redsun was the most nearly intolerable planet
she had ever been on.
"Yes. Don't you?"
"No. I don't see any way I ever could."
"It's sometimes hard, I know," Miria said. "Sometimes, when I'm tiredest, I even feel the same. But the
world's so rich and so strange-- don't you see the challenge?"
"I only want to leave it," Kylis said.
Miria looked at her for a moment, then nodded. "You're not from Redsun, are you?"
Kylis shook her head.
"No, there's no reason for you to have the same feelings as someone born here."
This was a side of Miria that Kylis had never seen, one of quiet but intense dedication to a world
whose rulers had imprisoned her. Despite her liking for Miria, Kylis was confused.
"How can you feel that way when they've sent you here? I hate them, I hate this place-- "
"Were you wrongly arrested?" Miria asked with sympathy.
"They could have just deported me. That's what usually happens."
"Sometimes injustice is done," Miria said sadly. "I know that. I wish it wouldn't happen. But I deserve
to be here, and I know that too. When my sentence is completed, I'll be forgiven."
More than once Kylis had thought of staying on some world and trying to live the way other people
did, even of accepting punishment, if necessary, but what had always stopped her was the doubt that
forgiveness was often, or ever, fully given. Redsun seemed an unlikely place to find amnesty.
"What did you do?"
Kylis felt Miria tense and wished she had not asked. Not asking questions about the past was one of
the few tacit rules among the prisoners.
"I'm sorry... it's not that I wouldn't tell you, but I just cannot talk about it."
Kylis sat in silence for a few minutes, scuffing the toe of her boot along the rock like an anxious child
and rubbing the silver tattoo on the point of her left shoulder. The pigment caused irritation and slight
scarring. The intricate design had not hurt for a long time, nor even itched, but she could feel the delicate
lines. Rubbing them was a habit. Even though the tattoo represented a life to which she would probably
never return, it was soothing.
"What's that?" Miria asked. Abruptly she grimaced. "I'm sorry, I'm doing just what I asked you not to
do."
"It doesn't matter," Kylis said. "I don't mind. It's a spaceport rat tattoo. You get it when the other rats