"Roger Taylor - Prisoner Of History" - читать интересную книгу автора (Taylor Roger)

had come from Home, laden with supplies and new prisoners. Those who were
released were replaced, then forgotten. The ships would leave, carrying produce
and ores that had been transported hundreds and thousands of miles across the
desert. No longer silver, but the same dull pink as the sky, the ships caught
the last light of the Star. Soon, it would be night.

Trobar supposed that he would have to stop calling it the Star, now that he was
a colonist. The prisoners all called it the Star, because the Sun was the fire
that blazed in the skies of Home. But he would never see Home again. The bus was
taking him farther away from Home than he had ever been before, to a colony
settlement to the north. This planet, the Colony World of T'arnp'ur, was now
home, and the Star was now the sun.

The driver of the bus was an old colonist. He told them stories as the night
rose around them. In the darkness, the mountains and the horizon, and even the
prison itself--everything fell away from them, leaving them in infinite space.
The road led from nowhere to nowhere. Only the voice of the driver gave them
something familiar to cling to. He had been transported fifty years ago, as a
young man. Back then, when the colony was new, the prison sentences had been
longer. He had served fifteen years before being allowed to join the colony.

"Not that the work was any easier," he said. "You couldn't tell the difference
between prisoner and colonist by the amount of work done. You still can't. The
work is hard, no matter which you are. For that matter, you might as well be a
prisoner, for prisoners are fed even in the midst of famine, but as a colonist
you've earned the right to starve along with the rest. Of course, you're given a
quadrant of ground, and when you marry your wife's quadrant is joined to that
and a third is thrown in as a bonus, and you get another quadrant bonus for each
child born. There's some consolation in that -- wife and children to come home
to after a hard day in the fields."

At the mention of marriage, the humor of the men began to pick up. They began to
tell stories, make ribald jokes among themselves.

The old man laughed at them. "Hold yourselves together, for there'll be enough
time for that. There's to be a Choosing when you arrive. You've not heard of
that? You hear all the bad rumors, but not the good ones. Well, when new
colonists come into a region, there's a festival. It's partly a leftover
celebration of convicts rejoicing in one another's good fortune. But it's more
than that now. All the Families bring out their sons and daughters, widows and
widowers, and marriages are made. You don't have to, you know. You're free
citizens, under the Emperor's bounty, and you can work your quadrant alone, if
you so wish. But remember, wealth is power, here as it is anywhere, and here on
T'arnp'ur, land is wealth. You're best off adding your quadrant in with a Family
that's accumulated much already. Many quadrants and many hands to work them.
That's the way to increase your wealth."
As the old man drove and talked, his voice slowly seeped into the bones of the
freedmen, and soon they began to talk. In prison, they had always been furtive,
as if they wanted to shield each other from the shame of being there. But now
they began to talk of where they were from and what had brought them there. One