"Bruce McAllister- Kin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcallister Bruce)

a lot of animals that wanted the same food you wantedтАФthat
your kind wanted. On Antalou, I mean."
Yes, the alien thought.
"I ran across other things, too," the boy went on, and the
alien heard the energy die again, heard in the boy's voice the
suppressive feeling his kind called "despair." The boy believed
that the man named Ortega-Mambay would still kill his sister,
and so the boy "despaired."
Again the boy hit the keyboard. A new diagram appeared.
It was familiar, though the alien had not seen one like itтАФso
clinical, detailed, and ornateтАФin half a lifetime.
It was the Antalouan family cluster, and though the alien
could not read them, he knew what the labels described: The
"kinship obligation bonds" and their respective "motivational
weights," the "defense-need parameters" and "bond-loss
consequences" for identity and group membership. There was
an inset, too, which gaveтАФin animated three-dimensional
displayтАФthe survival model human exopsychologists believed
could explain all Antalouan behavior.
The boy hit the keyboard and an iconographic list of the
"totemic bequeaths" and "kinship inheritances" from ancient
burial sites near Toloa and Mantok appeared.
"You thought you knew," the alien said, "what an Antalou
feels."
The boy kept his eyes on the floor. "Yes."
The alien did not speak for a moment, but when he did, it
was to say:
13
 Kin
by Bruce McAllister


"You were not wrong ... Tuckey-Yatsen."
The boy looked up, not understanding.
"Your sister will live," the Antalou said.
The boy blinked, but did not believe it.
"What I say is true," the alien said.
The alien watched as the boy's body began to straighten,
as energy, no longer suppressed in "despair," moved through
it.
"It was done," the alien explained, "without the killing ...
which neither you nor I ... could afford."
"They will let her live?"
"Yes."
"You are sure?"
"I do not lie ... about the work I do."
The boy was staring at the alien.
"I will give you the money," he said.
"No," the alien said. "That will not ... be necessary."
The boy stared for another moment, and then, strangely,