"Andre Norton - The X Factor 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

EVEN NIGHTTIME on Vaanchard was disturbing. It was not a time of peace
in which one could hide. There were gemlike glints in the garden path, a soft
luminescence to the growing things, new scents andтАФ Diskan Fentress hunched
over, his chin almost touching his knees, fingertips thrust into his ears. He
had closed his eyes to his surroundings, tooтАФthough there was no way to filter
those scents out of the air he breathed. His mouth worked; he was afraid he
was going to be thoroughly and disastrously sick, right here where his shame
would be public. Not that anyone would let him see their disgust, of course.
The elaborate pretense that Diskan Fentress was one of them would continue and
continue and continueтАФ He swallowed convulsively. The greenish moonlight had
reached the edge of the path now, awaking the glints to crystalline
brilliance. A new fragrance tantalized his nostrils, but not aggressively.
Diskan could not imagine anything in this garden as aggressive. When created
and brought to perfection by the Vaans, a pleasure place was subtle. Diskan
fought a silent struggle against his heaving insides, against the terrible
bonds this garden and the building from which he had fled, this city, this
world, had laid upon him. His trouble reached back farther than just his
coming here to VaanchardтАФto a day when Ulken the Overseer had brought a
stranger down to the pond back on Nyborg, had called Diskan out from the murky
water, where he stood up to his middle, green slime smearing his bare body,
and had spoken to him as if he were a-a thingтАФnot a man with feelings and a
mind, if not a body, like his fellows. Now Diskan's breath came in a ragged
sob. His eyes might register the path and the strange growth, if he wanted to
look, all the elfin glory of the night, but he saw the past now. His troubles
had not begun by the pond either, but back down the trail of years. His mouth
shaped a grimace, half a snarl of frustrated rage. Way back, that beginning-He
could not remember any time when he had not been aware of the truth, that
Diskan Fentress was a rejectтАФa badly working piece of human machinery that
could be turned only to the simplest and dirtiest of jobs. He did not know how
to use the outsize share of strength in his poorly coordinated body, breaking
when he wanted to mend or cherish. And his mind functioned almost as
badlyтАФslowly and stupidly. Why? How many times had he demanded that in the
past, ever since he could think and wonder at all! But he had learned quickly
not to ask it of anyone but himselfтАФand that impersonal power that might or
might not have had a hand in his misf ashioning. Back on Nyborg he hadтАФwould
they sayтАФ"adjusted"? At least being used for the brute-strength jobs left him
mostly to himself during the day, and that was escape of a kind, something he
did not have here. Then, in spite of shrinking from that memory, Diskan
thought again of the scene by the pond. Ulken, filthy, coarse, but still
judged infinitely higher in the community scale than Diskan, standing there, a
sly grin on his face, shouting as if his victim were deaf in addition to all
the rest. And the man with himтАФDiskan closed his eyes, licked his lips before
he swallowed again, willing himself not toтАФno, no! That man, lithe, of middle
height, all feline grace and ease, his fine body well displayed in the
brown-green uniform of Survey, the silver comet of a First-in Scout on his
breast! The stranger had looked so clean, so close to the ideal of Diskan's
haunted dreams that he had simply stared at him, not answering Ulken's shouted
ordersтАФuntil he saw that blackness on the Scout's face, just before the Scout
had turned on Ulken. The overseer had shriveled and backed off. But when the
Scout had looked at Disken once more, Ulken had grinned, maliciously, before