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

"That's not an easy thing," Thel said.

Without replying Garth turned back the way they had come, and they crept back to the clearing. Once
there they lay behind a fallen log and looked into the firelit cages. Garth's fellow folk sat there listlessly.
"Their trees won't grow back?"

"Would your arm?"

"And so they'll die?"

"Yes."

Garth slipped away, and after a time Thel saw an orange light like a sort of firefly bobbing through the
trees: Garth, holding a branch tipped by a glowing ember. Thel joined him, and they crept to the back of
the treefolk's cage, and Garth held the tip of the branch to the lashings at the bottom of one pole. As they
blew on the coal the treefolk inside watched, without a sound or any sign of interest. Garth begged those
inside to emerge, and got no reply.

Thel stared at the orange ember which brightened as they blew on it, embarrassed for Garth, and worried
about what he could do alone. When the cage lashing caught fire with a miniature explosion of white
flame, Garth looked at his comrades through the smoke and said fiercely, "You know what the spine
kings have done to you! You know what they'll do to you next! Come out and exact some revenge, meet
your end like trees should. While you do we can rescue a friend who yet lives, and you'll either make a
quick end to it, or escape to be free on the great spine when your time comes." He jerked hard on the
pole and it came loose. "Come on, get out there among them and remember the part of you they threw
on their fires."

One of them started forward and crawled under the lifted pole, and the rest looked at each other, at the
raw stumps protruding from their shoulders; they too slipped from the cage. In a moment they had all
disappeared into the dark.

"It would be better if we had something else for the other cage," Garth said to Thel. "The ember is dying."

"There are a lot more in the fire."

"My kin's lives."

"They can free these others."

Garth nodded. "We burn hot. But one of those swords they carry would be helpful." And he disappeared
again.

Thel waited, as near the swimmer's cage as he could get without emerging into the light. From the hut
beside the bonfire and the central cage came the sounds of laughter, then those of an argument turning
ugly. Around him in the forest were odd noises, sudden silences, and he imagined the treeless treefolk
wandering murderously in the dark, jumping drunken guards as they stumbled off to piss in the trees,
bludgeoning them and then stealing their swords to slip between the ribs of others. The spine kings feared
no one and now they would pay, ambushed in their own village in the midst of their death bacchanal. Sick
with images of brutal murder, keyed to the highest pitch of tension, Thel leaped to his feet involuntarily as