"Vonda N. McIntyre-The Genius Freaks" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

The Genius Freaks
by Vonda N. McIntyre
This story copyright 1979 by Vonda N. McIntyre. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use.
All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


Darting into a lighted spot in a dim pool--
***


Being born-- well, Lais remembered it, a gentle transition from warm liquid to warm air, an abrupt rise
in the pitch of sounds, the careful touch of hands, shock of the first breath. She had never told anyone
that her easy passage had lacked some quality, perhaps a rite that would have made her truly human.
Somewhere was a woman who had been spared the pain of Lais' birth, everywhere were people who
had caused pain, and, causing, experienced it, paying a debt that Lais did not owe. Sleeping curled in
fetal position in the dark gave her no comfort: the womb she was formed in had seemed a prison from the
time she was aware of it. Yet the Institute refused to grow its fetuses in the light. The Institute
administrators were normal and had been born normally. If they had ever been prenatally aware, the
memory had been obliterated or forgotten. They could not understand the frustration of the Institute
Fellows, or perhaps the thought of fishlike little creatures peering out, watching, learning, was too much
even for them to bear.
Lais' quiet impatience with an increasingly cramped world was only relieved by her birth, and by light,
which freed a sense she had felt was missing but could not quite imagine. Having reasoned that something
like birth must occur, she was much calmer under restraint than she had been only a little earlier. When
she first realized she was trapped, when she first grew large enough to touch both horizons of her sphere,
she had been intelligent but wild, suspicious and easily angered. She had thrashed, seeking escape;
nothing noticed her brief frenzy. The walls were spongy-surfaced, hard beneath; they yielded slightly, yet
held her. They implied something beyond the darkness, and allowed her to imagine it. All her senses were
inside the prison, so she imagined being turned inside out to be freed from her tether. She expected pain.
As she waited, she sometimes wished she were still a lower primate, small and stupid enough to
accept the warm salty liquid as the universe. Even then, as she kicked and paddled with clumsy hands
and feet, missing the strong propulsion of her vanished tail, she was changing. That was when she first
thought that the spectrum of her senses might lack a vital part. Her environment was still more alien now
than it had been when she was a lithe amphibian, barely conscious, long-tailed and free in an immense
world. Earlier than that, her memories were kinetic impressions, of gills pumping, heart fluttering, the low,
periodic vibration that never changed.
***


-- the silver-speckled black fish settled in a shadow at Lais' feet, motionless but seeming to ripple
beneath the mist and the disturbed surface of the water. Lais hunched down in her thick coat. The
layered branches of a gnarled tree protected her from the sleet, but not from the wind. She shivered.
Overhead, the vapor rising from the pool condensed in huge drops on the undersides of dark green
needles, and fell again. The tree smelled cool and tart. Beyond her shelter, the shapes of sculpture and
small gardens rose and flowed between low buildings and sleet-cratered puddles that reflected
intermittent lights. Except for Lais and the fishes, the flagstone mall was deserted. People had left their