"Kim Stanley Robinson - A Short, Sharp Shock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

firelit clearing. In the clearing were huts, cages, and platforms, all made of straight branches with the bark
still on them. Some of the cages held huddled figures.

Thel froze. Reflection of torchlight from a pair of eyes, the shaggy head of a wild beast captured and
caged, brilliant whites defiant and exhausted: it was her. Thel stared and stared at the black lump of the
body, heavy in the dark, clothed only in dirtтАФthe tangled hair backlit by fire-eyes reflecting torchlight. He
had no idea why he was so certain. But he knew it was the swimmer.

The treefolk were clustered around him. When guards with torches arrived in the clearing, the prisoners
sat up, and around him Thel heard a faint rustling of leaves. He peered more closely and saw that the
cage beside the swimmer's held seated figures, slumped over. One of them begged for water and the
guards approached. In the sharply flickering torchlight Thel could see slack faces, eyes shut against the
light, odd hunched shouldersтАФah. Trunks, stalks, stumps: their shoulder bushes had been chopped off.
One of the captured treefolk, lying flat on the ground, was hauled up; he still had his little tree, its fruit
gone, its leaves drooping. "The fire's low," one guard said drunkenly, and drew his short broadsword and
hacked away. It took several blows, thunk, thunk, the victim weeping, his companions listless, looking
away, the other guards holding the victim upright and steady and finally bending the trunk of the miniature
tree until it broke with a dull crack. The victim flopped to the ground and the guards left the cage and
tossed the little tree onto the embers of a big fire: it flared up white and burned well for several minutes,
as if the wood were resinous.
Thel's companions had watched this scene without moving; only the rustle of leaves betrayed their
distress. The guards left and they slipped back into the black forest, and Thel followed them. When they
showed no signs of stopping he crashed forward recklessly, and pulled at Julo's arm; when Julo shrugged
him off and continued on, Thel reached out and grabbed the trunk of Julo's shoulder tree and yanked him
around, and then had to defend himself immediately from a vicious rain of blows, which stopped only
when "the other treefolk threw themselves between the two, protesting in anxious mutters, whispering,
"Shh, shh, shhh."

"What are you doing?" Thel cried softly.

"Leaving," Julo said between his teeth.

"Aren't you going to free them?"

"They're dead." Julo turned away, clearly too disgusted and furious to discuss it further. With a fierce
chopping gesture he led the others away.

"What about the swimmer?"

They didn't stop. Suddenly the black forest seemed filled with distant voices, with drunken bodies
crashing into underbrush, with yellow winking torches bouncing through the trees. Thel backed into a
tree, leaned against the shaggy bark. He took deep deliberate breaths. The cage had, been made of
lashed branches, but out in the center of the clearing like that . . .

"I'll help you," Garth said out of the darkness, giving Thel a start. "It's me, Garth."

They held each other's forearms in the dark. "You'll lose the others if you stay," Thel said.

"I know," Garth said, voice low and bitter. "You've seen how he treats me. I want to be free of them all,
forever. I'll make my own life from now on."