"China Mieville - The Scar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mieville China)

donтАЩt wait.тАЭ

Bellis sat on a little longer, but there was nothing at all that she could do, so she thinned her lips and left.


She stood for a long time under Iron BayтАЩs cold sky. The stars were invisible; the moon and its
daughters, its two little satellites, were unclear. Bellis walked, tense against the chill, and climbed the
short ladder to the shipтАЩs raised front, heading for the bowsprit.

Bellis held on to the iron railings and stood on the tips of her toes. She could just see out, across the
lightless sea.

Behind her the sounds of the crew faded. A way off, she could see two guttering red pins of light: a torch
on the bridge of a prison-ship, and its twin in the black surf.

From the crowтАЩs nest, or from somewhere in the rigging, from some indistinct spot a hundred feet or
more above her, Bellis heard a strain of mouth-music. It was not like the imbecilic shanties she had
heard in Tarmuth. It was slow and complex.

You will have to wait for your letter,Bellis mouthed silently across the water.You will have to wait to
hear from me. YouтАЩll have to wait a little while longer, until cray-country.

She watched the night until the last lines of division between shore, sea, and sky were obscured. Then,
cosseted by darkness, she walked slowly aft, toward the constricted doorways and stooped passages
leading to her cabin, a scrap of space like a flaw in the shipтАЩs design.

(Later the ship moved uneasily, in the coldest hour, and she stirred in her bunk and she pulled the
blanket up to her neck, and she realized somewhere below her dreams that the living cargo was coming
aboard.)


I am tired here in the dark and I am full of pus.

My skinтАЩs taut with it, stretched till it puckers nor can I touch it without it rages. IтАЩm infected. I hurt
where I touch and I touch everywhere to make sure that I hurt that IтАЩm not yet numb.

But still thank whatever makes these veins mine IтАЩm full of blood. I worry my scabs and they brim I brim

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 The Scar

with it. And thatтАЩs a small comfort nor mind the pain.


They come for us when the airтАЩs so still and black without not a seabird cries. They open our doors and
shine lights, uncovering us. I am almost ashamed to see how we have surrendered, weтАЩve surrendered
up to filth.

I can see nothing beyond their lights.