"Sheri S. Tepper - Awakeners 1 - Northshore" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

 NORTHSHORE-Awakeners1

" 'Almost' gave the boatman a wooden leg."
The men snorted. An old jest, but a true one. What the blight touched, it turned to wood, slowly or quickly, and if it
touched the boatman's hand he would have the choice of cutting the hand off if he moved without hesitation or becoming a
life-size carving of himself.
Some said once the blight hardened completely it lost its power of contagion, but Thrasne had seen a man lose a foot
kicking something that seemed very hard indeed. "Just push it over the side, Swin. Don't stand there looking at it, or you'll
forget what you're looking at and pick it up."
Swin grunted and pushed the fish overboard with a boathook. The few remaining fish were free of blight, thrashing around
on the deck making high-pitched squeals from their air bladders. The men began clubbing and cleaning them, tossing the
gutted fish down where other crewmen waited with the salt kegs. Thrasne turned to stowing the nets. Blight meant extra
care there, too. They would have to be lowered into the net locker without touching them and sprayed with a mixture of
sulphur and powdered frag leaf. Only when they had steeped in this mixture for a day or two could the men safely handle
them again. Now they were plying (he long hooks in gingerly fashion, pushing the nets below, and Obers-rom was already
mixing frag powder. A good man, Obers-rom. Never needed to be told anything twice.
Thrasne leaned over the rail to watch the blighted fish moving alongside, sinking very slowly as they went, still visible
after long minutes had gone by. They floated right side up; they looked almost alive, only the lack of movement betraying
that they were fish no more. Or perhaps fish of a different kind. Thrasne had seen a man touched by blight once. In fact,
Thrasne had been the one to use the axe, and he still woke in the night sometimes sweating from the memory of it. The
boatman had kept his chopped-off leg in a netting sack, sprayed down with blight powder. He carried it about with him to
taverns, where he sold topers a look at it in exchange for drinks, daring the foolhardy to touch it and see whether the blight
had left it or not.
"Dangers in every caste and trade," said owner Blint from time to time. "None free of peril."
Thrasne supposed that was true. He went below to change his shirt and hide his books. Not that he had many, but those he
had he wanted to keep. His book of fables about the South shore. His History of North shore in three volumes, Bine-tenths
of it nonsense, Blint said, and all of it forbidden. Thrasne didn't care. It made a nice thing to do some evenings when the
winds were warm, sit on the deck in the light of the owner-house windows and read about how humans first landed on
North shore, down from the stars, and about their great wars with the Thraish, whoever they may have been. Winged
creatures, by the sound of it in the stories, who could talk just like men. And all the men using metal tools and weapons,
which was enough right there to show you why it was all false and unapproved. But who wanted to read approved books?
Lives of the Great Awakeners. The biography of Thoulia. Poof. One might as well read the chart-of-towns; it was more
interesting.
They'd be in Bans by noon, and owner Blint would likely seek trade. Most of the towns along this stretch were short of
spices and salt. They'd want to give pamet in exchange, and the Gift couldn't take it. No room left in the holds. It would
have to be something less bulky. Dried fruit, jam, jelly. Candies, maybe. The confectioners were supposed to be something
special along here. Something about candies in one of their Festival myths. And toys. Little things for children. Mechanical
ones that could be wound up. The toymakers on this stretch were notable. Not that Thrasne had been along this stretch
before; he'd been only four years on the Gift of Potipur, starting when he was twelve as go-get-boy.
As he struggled with the buttons of his shirt, he examined the row of carvings set on his storage chest. There was a long,
slender piece of clear fragwood he'd been saving, and he thought he'd make a fish of it. A surprised fish, with blight
halfway up its tail. The carvings stared back at him from the chest top: merchants, children, the tall robed figure of an
Awakener, even a worker, shapeless and hopeless in its canvas wrappings. The little figures seemed almost to breathe. One
at the near end of the row looked at him in eternal supplication, and Thrasne took it into his hands with a little groan,
warmth pouring into his belly.
"Suspirra," he whispered. It was his name for her, the otherwise nameless ideal, loveliest of all women, created out of his
head and his aching loins. She lay on his pillow when he sought his solitary comforts. She watched him when he dressed
and washed himself, always with the same expression of supplication and entreaty. "Love me," she begged silently. "Love
me." And he did love her, in a lonely fever, almost forgetting sometimes that she was no longer than his forearm. He had
carved her in one daylong frenzy of creation, the wood curling away from his blade as though it sought to reveal what lay