"Sheri S. Tepper - Jinian Stareye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

'Did it hurt you?' I wrapped my punctured finger in a leaf and tucked the star-eye back in my shirt.

'Oh. No. No, I couldn't even feel it.'

'Well, if you can hear it and smell it, how come you can't feel it?'

'Probably because the world . . .'

'Lorn.'

'Probably because Lom hears it and smells it but doesn't feel it. I mean, if they're memories, then they act
like memories, don't you think? If I set myself to remember - oh, that time I tried to rescue you and
Silkhands from the Ghoul. Remember that? -1 remember the stink, and the heat of the flames, and I can
still hear my own voice yelling stupid things, but I don't burn. I don't singe. I wince at the memory, but I
don't end up half-asphyxiated from smoke. I remember the fire having happened, but I don't revoke it, so
to speak. The stink, though, that always comes back.'

This, too, made sense. Smell, sight, and hearing happen inside one's head, but assault comes from the
outside


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world. So the memory of smell could be the smell itself, but the memory of pain . . . Well, creatures
probably survive better if they can't remember pain too well.

He nodded. 'Of course some memories are very hurtful. It would probably be prudent for us to be careful.'

Now he was talking about prudence. Peter! I didn't believe it. Agreed with it, yes; believed it, no. Peter
had never been prudent in his entire life. He nodded his head a couple of times, as though he were setting
that firmly in mind, then asked, 'Now. Where do we go, and what do we do?'

During the night we'd just spent together, tight-wrapped in each other's arms and chaste as two baby
bunwits, both trying not to say the things that would frighten us to death or make us cry, sometimes he'd
dozed off with his lips next to my throat, his breath tickling me like an owl's feather. It had been
necessary then, since I couldn't sleep, to think of something unemotional, so I'd spent the time thinking
about the Maze. Now I trotted out my conclusions, hoping they were correct. 'If these three events are
linked, so to speak, by a single line of thought or category or index heading, then we'll have to suppose
other things are linked in the same way. So. We try to find some line of thought that might logically take
us where we want to go.'

'Which is?'

'Wherever Lom is thinking about dying.'

He looked depressed. There was nothing I could say to make the task seem either easier or more pleasant.
I knew exactly how he felt. It's how I felt in the Forest of Chimmerdong when something vague and