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

In his mind he called himself Thel. But his real name . . . Black space, behind his nose, in the sky under
his skull. ... "It will do here," he said, and waved a hand. "It is accurate enough."

The man laughed. "So it is. I am Julo." He looked across the circle. "Garth, come here."

A young man stood. He had been sitting opposite Julo, facing out from the circle, and now Thel noticed
his tree grew from the right shoulder rather than the left.

"This is Garth, which means Rightbush. Garth, give Thel here an apple." Garth hesitated, and Julo strode
across the circle of watchers and cuffed him on the arm. "Do it!"
Garth approached Thel and stood before him, looked down. Thel said to him, "Which should I choose?"

With a grateful glance up the youth indicated the largest fruit, on a lower branch. Thel took the round
green sphere in his fingers and pulled sharply, noting Garth's involuntary wince. Then he sniffed the stem,
and bit through the skin. The bitter taste of orange, he sat in a small dark room, watching the wick of a
lamp lit by a match held in long fingers, the flame turned up and burning poorly, in a library with
bookcases for walls and a huge old leather globe in one corner. ... He shook his head, back on the windy
dawn spine, Julo's laughter in his ear, behind that a crystalline ringing. A bird hovered in the updraft, a
windhover searching the lee cliff for prey. "Thank you," Thel said to Garth.

The treefolk gathered around him, touched his bare shoulders, asked him questions. He had nothing but
questions in reply. Who were the spine kings? he asked, and their faces darkened. "Why do you ask?"
Julo said. "Why don't you know?"

Thel explained. "The fisherfolk pulled me from the sea. Before thatтАФI don't know. I can't . . ." He
shook-his head. "They pulled out a woman with me, a swimmer, and sold her to the spine kings." He
gestured helplessly, the thought of her painful. Already the memory of her was fading, he knew. But that
touch in the moonlightтАФ"I want to find her."

"They have some of our people as well," Julo said. "We're going after them." He reached into his bag and
threw Thel a leaf cloak and a pair of leather moccasins with thick soles. "You can come along. They're at
Kataptron Cove, for the sacrifices."

The boy's fruit was suddenly heavy on his stomach, and he shuddered as if every cell in him had tasted
something bitter.



5. The Snake and the Tree



The treefolk hiked long and hard, following a line on the broad crest that minimized the ups and downs,
nearly running along a rock road that Thel judged to be some three thousand feet above the sea. After a
few days, the south side of the sinuous peninsula became a fairly gentle slope, cut by ravines and covered
with tall redwood trees; in places on this side the beach was a wide expanse, dotted with ponds and
green with rippling dune grass. The north side, on the other hand, remained a nearly vertical cliff, falling
directly into waves, which slapped against the rock unbroken and sent bowed counterwaves back out to
the north, stippling the blue surface of the water with intersecting arcs.