"Kit Reed - On The Penal Colony" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

Appearances. Happy colonists. Model prisoners. If you look at all, you don't see
past the costumes and bland faces, but there is rage.scorching the sweaty gauze
under our wigs and murder in our hearts. Be careful what you do when you come
into our shops and houses; be careful what you say! Rebellion etches the insides
of our bellies; pry open our jaws and you'll see fire. We mean to destroy
Bullfinch Warden, but you happen to be closer. Beware. We could just rip a hole
in your face.

Some days one of us forgets himself and strikes out or makes a break for it, but
it never lasts long: the belts. The monitors. The drugs. No sleep. Debilitating
food.

By the time you come at ten A.M. we're so deep into it that we look right at
home in the confected past. And if Quiven and Joanna fall in love and begin to
plan, I don't guess it, so how could you? I am in love with Gemma, but it's only
since the auto da fe.

Quiven was in love with Joanna. He couldn't leave it alone. Notes dropped in
with the laundry, sweet Gemma slipped Joanna's notes into the pockets of his
fatigues for her, and in the men's supply room Laramie Beckam did the same for
Quiven. Quiven and Joanna had seconds to cherish and devour each other's notes;
the screws turn out the beds and check the toilets on the hour. Their love fed
on messages in the code desperate prisoners send, endearments tapped out on
prison pipes. They kept in touch! Love grew on the most insubstantial
communication veiled looks, endearments murmured in line; one day I saw Quiven
and Joanna lock fingers. I whispered, "Careful. You'll get hurt!" but a trusty
heard me and instead of working at the smithy I logged the twelve hours until
the park closed with my head and hands clamped in the village stocks. I tried to
warn him!

"But let's face it, ladies and gentlemen. These people are animals. We are a
warehouse here. Good penology is optimizing it."

Quiven knew it would kill them both but he was in love. Still, love might have
died of starvation if Bullfinch Warden hadn't caught Joanna dreaming over her
spinning wheel: a complaint. Family of Latvians, in the hand-worked shirts and
aprons with the lambs embroidered on the front. When lovesick Joanna was too
distracted to answer their hundred questions they went to the warden for a
refund. Mind you they thought he was the historic curator. Yeah, right. "We come
so far. She look asleep!" They claimed the hostess in Cotton Mather house was
not only dumb, but deaf.

The next day Joanna was ashen and drawn. Bullfinch Warden had activated her
anklets. Not bigtime torture, just enough voltage to keep her on her toes. Safe.
But seeing Joanna suffer drove Quiven nuts. It was around then that we had the
Indian corn pudding riot, with Quiven standing up on the table in the dining
hall and us chanting and banging our cups until they zapped all the anklets and
belts and we fell out senseless from the pain. When we came to, Quiven was in
solitary and we were under lockdown on short rations, bread and water and fried
pork rinds, don't ask.