"Geoff Ryman - The Unconquered Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ryman Geoff)

villages moved into the hills.
Third had been a child in a rebel village, hidden in a valley. She lived there until the
end of her sixth summer. In the middle of the village, on a wooden pole, there flew
the white and yellow flag of the Un-conquered People. The women had worked the
rice, while men kept watch in the hills, with old guns from other wars.
The name "Third Child" had been a spell, to make sure that there would be no more
children born to her mother and father. The spell worked. A month after Third was
born, her father was killed. By a tiger, it was said. There were very few tigers left.
They had become beasts of portent. They ate people.
Third looked ordinary, to herself and others. She loved numbers. Her cousin, who
was a man, had a position as an Accountant. Third would sit next to him in rapt and
silent wonder, as the yarrow stalks clicked back and forth, counting in fan-shaped
patterns. Her cousin was charmed that she was interested, sweet and silent as a child
should be. He showed her how the yarrow worked.
Numbers were portents too. They were used as oracles. This was a practical thing.
Rice shoots were counted; yields were predicted; seed was stored. Numbers spread
out in fanlike shapes, into the future. Third could read them. She saw yarrow in her
mind, ghost yarrow she sometimes called them, and they would scurry ahead of the
real stalks. They moved too fast for her to follow, flashing, weaving. They leapt to
correct answers, ahead of her cousin.
If anyone asked Third how much rice was in a bowl, she would answer, "enough." It
was always polite to answer that there was enough rice, even when there wasn't. But
if anyone had pressed for more detail, Third could have answered, "Six hundred to
seven hundred grains." The yarrow stalks in her mind would click, telling her how
much space ten grains tookтАФas represented by so many lengths cut into a
stalkтАФand how much space there was in a bowl. The ghost yarrow opened and
closed, like a series of waving fans, beau-tiful, orderly, true.
As Third carried food to her mother in the fields, the yarrow would move. They told
her the number of rice shoots, and the rate of their growth. She would have an early
sense of the harvest, and how many days were left until they all could rest. She could
not follow the waving fans, but she could feel her mind driving them. It was a
pleasurable sensation, this slight sense of forcing something ahead. She could make
them go faster if she wanted to.
It was how she saw the world; it was as if the world were a forest of yarrow, moving
all around her, as if numbers were leaves, rustling in the wind.
Third did not talk much. This was considered de-lightfully demure. She helped
around the house, she found helping about the house very easy, and even her
mother, who was used to her, had to exclaim at the tidiness of Third. Her second
sister was chagrined. But the eldest sister was proud of her. Everything was always
tidy around Third. The mat, the vase, the wooden cup, the brazier, the clay pot full
of sour sauce: they were in place. You knew Third had been at work because it was
beautiful. Organized according to some unseen principle that even the number-blind
could recognize as possessing quality.
"Our little princess," her eldest sister would call her. Only princesses in stories had
time for arranging flowers. Third worked quickly. This house had no flowers, but it
looked as if it did.
The rebels had an interest in education. They sent a teacher to Third's village, and
she was a woman of great application. She stayed eight weeks and two days, and
then she had to go back to the war. It would be, as one always had to say, enough.
She was to teach the children how to read and to count. Third was averagely bad at