"Tepper, Sheri S - A Plague Of Angels - plangel2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)
Abasio put his head on his bundle and concentrated on grayhess, noth-
122 Sheri S. Tepper
ingness, nothing at all, at all. Grandpa had always said monsters could read people's thoughts. It was important, so he had always said, not to think.
So he would not think. Despite the vibration of the trunk, despite their scratching at it, the deep rasp of their claws on wood, the stench, the howls, he would not think of them. He would think of something else. Horses. Horses away somewhere else. Delicious horses. Galloping, galloping, why weren't these trolls out hunting horse? Hmmm?
Silence below. Yammer-snarl-yammer. Moving away among the trees. Abasio didn't fall for it. Both trolls and ogres had been known to move away and sit silent for hours, waiting for prey to appear. Trolls were very patient. One of the Purple legends written in the Book of the Purples was of Ben the Wolf, who had gone into the wilderness, sought out a monster in its lair, pursued it underground, and slaughtered it. Abasio had always considered the story apocryphal. One of Grandpa' s words, apocryphal. Nothing in the present encounter had made him change his mind. He curled up on the blanket as best he could. Eventually he fell asleep.
First light found him early awake. The grove beneath him was empty. Trolls were usually back in their lairs by dawn because sunlight immobilized them. They were blinded by bright light. Abasio climbed down stiffly, achingly, yelling a few times and bouncing on the branches, just to bring out anything that might be hiding. Finally he dropped from thirty feet up in the tree, falling and rolling, managing not to break anything.
When he looked at the trunk of the tree he'd been in, he couldn't hold back a shudder. Claws had ripped it deep, shredded the bark so that it hung in tatters. And everywhere around was the splash and stench of monster, marking the territory.
He left quickly, making time for a quick bath in the fiver, breakfast of cold meat and potato, tracking the horse--which had not gone as far as it should have for its own good--and continuing his journey. From the hill where he'd camped he could look east across the river to the highway, a shiny line where bug-size freight vehicles trundled along spouting smoke. A~ one ~ime, so Grandpa had told him, highways would have been full of vehicles, people going here and there, things being carried back and forth from the far edges of the world. Goods that could be manufactured next door, food people could have grown for themselves, both had been carried across whole countries! People had used fuel prodigiously in the old days, which left damned little for use now. Of course, most of the people had gone to the stars, so there wasn't so much need now.
By midmorning, he could see the tops of the Wise Rocks, their flattish heads seeming to float above a ridge some distance to his right, up the Crystal River valley that wound westerly into the hills. As he rode higher, the lower parts of the red pillars came into view: tall, contorted, slightly hunched
A PLAGUE OF ANGELS 123
figures, their heads together in eternal confabulation. Since he left the Patrol Post, he had not seen anyone except the Farmwife he'd bought food from. Now, hungry for the sound of voices, he found himself listening, as though he might hear the stones talking if he were only quiet enough.
Though boiling with rampant, muddy fury in the spring when fed by the runoff from the western ranges, the Crystal River was clear and burbling this time of year. Along its flow, here on the valley floor, was where the refugee had been, Abasio thought. She'd been seen by hunters who, if they'd been hunting goats, must have been high upon the ridge, among the feathery new growth of forest. There were more goats all the time, and more deer, too, as the forests and meadows came back on the heights, replanted by Sisters to Trees. Abasio's ma's ma had been a Sister to Trees, according to Grandpa, and there were others of them among the Farmwives in the valley.
The hunters would not have been the only ones to see the refugee. Someone on a farm would have seen her as well. Abasio would ask. If that failed, he would ride on to Whitherby, the nearest village down the Long Plain, a few hours ahead. But first--first he'd ask at the farms. Perhaps at Grandpa's farm.
He pulled up the horse as though needing stillness to contemplate that idea. Grandpa's farm. Well, maybe he wouldn't go there. He took a deep breath. Maybe he'd ask about Grandpa, but he wouldn't go there. He was honest enough to admit the reason. He'd had certain dreams of himself when he was a child. He and Ma had sometimes talked about what he could do or be. They had talked of traveling west to join the Guardians. Grandpa had been full of tales of the Guardians. Or he would explore the lands to the south, where new towns were said to be growing out of the low jungles, maybe become an Animal Master or a Sea Shepherd.
When he'd run away, he hadn't planned to be a ganger. That had just happened. The dreams, the plans, the visions he'd had of himself when he was a kid didn't match what he was now. He didn't want to deal with that difference. That dissonance.
It was not a word Abasio would have said aloud in Fantis. The gangs were suspicious of polysyllabic talk, of meanings that were too precise. They used few and sharp words to serve aggressive use; few and hard words for threats; few and sodden words for everyday; flabby words with variable meaning, words that look their sense mostly from the tone and the rhythm of speech, that could equally well be endearment or deadly insult, depending on how things came out. The same words could be an invitation to a woman, a challenge to a ganger, an order to a slave, a greeting to a shop owner in the district, the repeated refrain of a song, or a final insult to a dying man.
"Like apes," Grandpa had said, the one time Abasio had gone back, looking for Ma. "Like apes, Abasio. No oral tradition, rejecting literacy as
A PLAGUE OF ANGELS 123
figures, their heads together in eternal confabulation. Since he left the Patrol Post, he had not seen anyone except the Farmwife he'd bought food from. Now, hungry for the sound of voices, he found himself listening, as though he might hear the stones talking if he were only quiet enough.
Though boiling with rampant, muddy fury in the spring when fed by the ranoff from the western ranges, the Crystal River was clear and burbling this time of year. Along its flow, here on the valley floor, was where the refugee had been, Abasio thought. She'd been seen by hunters who, if they'd been hunting goats, must have been high upon the ridge, among the feathery new growth of forest. There were more goats all the time, and more deer, too, as the forests and meadows came back on the heights, replanted by Sisters to Trees. Abasio's ma's ma had been a Sister to Trees, according to Grandpa, and there were others of them among the Farmwives in the valley.
The hunters would not have been the only ones to see the refugee. Someone on a farm would have seen her as well. Abasio would ask. If that failed, he would ride on to Whitherby, the nearest village down the Long Plain, a few hours ahead. But first--first he'd ask at the farms. Perhaps at Grandpa's farm.
He pulled up the horse as though needing stillness to contemplate that idea. Grandpa's farm. Well, maybe he wouldn't go there. He took a deep breath. Maybe he'd ask about Grandpa, but he wouldn't go there. He was honest enough to admit the reason. He'd had certain dreams of himself when he was a child. He and Ma had sometimes talked about what he could do or be. They had talked of traveling west to join the Guardians. Grandpa had been full of tales of the Guardians. Or he would explore the lands to the south, where new towns were said to be growing out of the low jungles, maybe become an Animal Master or a Sea Shepherd.
When he'd run away, he hadn't planned to be a ganger. That had just happened. The dreams, the plans, the visions he'd had of himself when he was a kid didn't match what he was now. He didn't want to deal with that difference. That dissonance.
It was not a word Abasio would have said aloud in Fantis. The gangs were suspicious of polysyllabic talk, of meanings that were too precise. They used few and sharp words to serve aggressive use; few and hard words for threats; few and sodden words for everyday; flabby words with variable meaning, words that took their sense mostly from the tone and the rhythm of speech, that could equally well be endearment or deadly insult, depending on how things came out. The same words could be an invitation to a woman, a challenge to a ganger, an order to a slave, a greeting to a shop owner in the district, the repeated refrain of a song, or a final insult to a dying man.
"Like apes," Grandpa had said, the one time Abasio had gone back, looking for Ma. "Like apes, Abasio. No oral tradition, rejecting literacy as
understanding is limited. but also ~xperience.
o~an~pa~s words. Like the word he had just thought of in reference to the unquiet jangling of his spirit and of the ~o~t~
b~n named Suttle. The man had often Been away, so the t'arm had been man-
aged by his wife along with a bunch of children and other people, including
some female relative with a simpleton-son. Likely they were still there.
So recalling, he turned in at the gate. A tributary brook ran beside the
lane, bits of bark and leaves bobbing along beside him as he rode, losing
themselves among the willows and sedges that lined the banks, washing
ashore on grassy ledges. Rising around him was the fresh smell of we~ soil
and leaves, the scent of moist growth, and he stooped to
,,,,a,,~-t ....- ............ ~ u~ intense and totally unexpected joy. Beside
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