"Linda Nagata - The Bohr Maker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nagata Linda)

was hungry. She glanced again at the trapdoor. "Sumiati," she called softly.

The termite-eaten floorboards creaked, then Sumiati peered through the door. She had an empty
bucket in her hands, ready to pass it to Phousita. "So fast today! Did you fill the first bucket already? It's
about time our catch improved!" Her dark eyes widened when she saw the body. She sucked in a little
breath of surprise. "Phousita, he's still got his clothes! Hold him! Don't let the current take tuan away. I'll
come down. Look how beautiful his robe is. Oh, do you think we're the first to find him?" She put the
bucket down, then turned to climb through the trapdoor, moving awkwardly as she bent over her
pregnant belly. She hung for a moment from the insulated wire rope, looking like some rare, ripe fruit.
Then she dropped gracefully to the narrow metal plank that Arif had lashed between the pilings. It
shivered under the impact.

Phousita reached out a hand to steady her. Sumiati was a small woman, but even beside her,
Phousita was tiny. She stood no taller than a petite child of seven or eight, though she was nearly
twenty-five years old. Despite her size, her body was that of a woman: slender and beautifully
proportioned, endowed with ample breasts and rounded hips, but on a scale that seemed unnaturally
small. With her pretty round face, her dark eyes, and her thick black hair carefully coiled at the nape of
her neck, she might have been a diminutive spirit out of some forgotten mythology.

Her unusual appearance had once attracted many clients after hours in the business district. But
she'd promised Arif she wouldn't venture down there anymore. She was hungrier these days. The clothes
from this dead man would buy a large quantity of rice.
And yet she hesitated. Easy wealth was so often cursed with misfortune. "I don't like finding the
tuan here," she told Sumiati, instinctively using the traditional honorific. "There's no telling what evil
influences tuan carries with him. Let's work quickly, then I'll shove him back into the river."
Sumiati looked suddenly concerned. "Maybe we should call Arif."

"No!" Sumiati jerked at the sharp tone of Phousita's voice. Phousita hunched her shoulders; she
looked across at the dead man. "No," she said more gently. "No need to wake Arif. We can do it."
Pulling the close-fitting skirt of her sarong up above her knees, she eased herself into the water until her
tiny feet touched the clean gravel that cushioned the river's concrete bed. The current swirled in cool
streams around her waist, gradually soaking her faded blue breastcloth. She reached back to help
Sumiati down, then grabbed the empty fluff bucket and started wading toward the dead man, one hand
on the fluff boom for balance.

Arif had constructed the boom shortly after he'd moved the clan into the abandoned warehouse.
He'd gathered rare old plastic bottles, the kind that didn't disintegrate in only a few weeks. He'd cut them
in half and then lashed them to a plank stripped from the warehouse. They floated half-submerged in the
water and when the fluff came floating down the river they trapped it, like huge hands grasping at the
feast. The system had worked well for many months. It would still work, if only there were more fluff in
the river ... or fewer hungry people. Her gaze scanned the thin line of brown foam bobbing against the
boom. A dismal catch. Not enough there to feed three people and there were thirty-nine empty bellies in
the clan. Forty, counting Sumiati's soon-to-be-born. Phousita tried not to think about it.
Fierce rays of yellow light lanced under the river house as the sun leapt up over the city. Phousita
touched the dead man's head. Bright white flecks of bone and torn pink flesh could be seen through his
black hair. The back of his skull had been caved in by a blow. The current still washed dilute puffs of
blood from the wound. He must have been only minutes in the water. She lifted his head carefully by the
long hair. His face was pale, nondescript European. His eyes were closed. A single kanji glowed in soft,
luminescent red on his cheek. She couldn't read it. "Look, tuan was robbed," she said, pointing at the
torn lobes of his ears where earrings must have been. Sumiati peered over her shoulder.