"Joan D. Vinge, txt v2.0, To Bell the Cat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Joan D)

Something that was almost envy crossed Jary's face. He leaned forward absently to pick up a stone from the pile between his feet. Corouda saw it was a piece of obsidian: night-black volcanic glass with the smoothness of silk or water, spotted with ashy, snowflake impurities. Jary cupped it for a moment in his lacerated palms, then dropped it like a hot coal, wincing. It fell back into the pile, into a chain reaction, cascading a rainbow of colors and textures. Two quick drops of red from Jary's hand fell into the colors; he shut his eyes again with his hands palm-up on his knees, meditating. This time Corouda watched, forcing himself, and saw the bleeding stop. He wondered with a kind of morbid fascination how many other strange abilities Jary had.

Jary opened his eyes again; seemed surprised to find Corouda still in front of him. He laughed suddenly, uncomfortably. "You're welcome to play with my rocks, Warden, since you let me play squamish. B - but I won't join you." He pushed a rock forward carefully with his foot.

Corouda leaned over to pick it up: a lavender cobble flecked with clear quartz, worn smooth by eons rolled in the rivers of some other world. He smiled at the even coolness and the solidness of it; the smile stopped when he realized how much more that must mean to Jary.

"Orr lets me have rocks," Jary was saying. "I started collecting when they sent me to the Institute. If I held still and did what I was told, sometimes somebody would let me go out and walk around the grounds.... I like rocks: They don't d - d - die," his voice cracked unexpectedly. "What did you really see, there in the cave, W - warden?"

"Enough." Corouda sat down on the ground and tossed the rock back into the pile. "Why did you do it, Jary?"

Jary's eyes moved aimlessly, searching the woods for the cave mouth. "I d - don't know."

"I mean - what you did to the people on Angsith. And on Ikeba. Why? How could anyone - "

Jary's eyes came back to his face, blurred with the desperate pain of a man being forced to stare at the sun. "I don't remember. I don't remember...." He might have laughed.

Corouda had a sudden, sickening double vision of the strutting, uniformed Jary who had helped to turn worlds into charnel houses ... and Jary the Catspaw, who collected stones.

Jary's hands tightened into fists. "But I did it. I am P - piper Alvarian Jary! I am guilty." He stretched his fingers again with a small gasp; his palms oozed bright blood like a revelation. "Fifteen b - billion people can't be wrong ... and I've been lucky."

"Lucky?" Corouda said, inadequately.

Jary nodded at his feet. "Lucky they gave me to Orr. Some of the others ... I've heard stories ... they didn't care who they gave them to." Then, as if he sensed Corouda's unspoken question, "Orr only punishes me when I do something wrong. He's not cruel to me ... he didn't have to make sure I wouldn't feel p - pain. He doesn't care what I did; I'm just something he uses. At least I'm useful." His voice rose slightly: "I'm really very grateful that I'm so well off. That I only spend half my time cut up like a f - flatworm, or flat on my back with fever and diarrhea, or vomiting or fed through a tube or cleaning up the guts of d - dead animals - " Jary's hands stopped short of his face. He wiped his face roughly with the sleeve of his coveralls and stood up, scattering rocks.

"Jary - wait a minute." Corouda rose to his knees. "Sit down."

Jary's face was under control again; Corouda couldn't tell whether he turned his back gladly or only obediently. He sat down hard, without hands to guide him. "You know, if you wanted to be useful ..." Corouda struggled with the half - formed idea. "The thing you did for me, testing those plants; the way you can synthesize antidotes and vaccines. You could be very useful, working on a new world like this one." Jary gaped at him. "What do you m - m" he bit his lips" mean?" "Is there any way Orr would be willing to let you work for some other group?"

Jary sat silently while his disbelief faded through suspicion into nothing. His mouth formed the imitation of a smile that Corouda had seen before. "It cost too much to make me a b - biochemical miracle, Warden. You couldn't afford me ... unless Orr disowned me. Then I'd be nobody's - or anybody's."

"You mean, he could just let you go? And you'd be free?"

"Free." Jary's mouth twitched. "If I m - made him mad enough, I guess he would."

"My God, then why haven't you made him mad enough?"

Jary pulled his hands up impassively to his chest. "Some people like to l - look at my scars, Warden. If I didn't belong to a research institute, they could do more than just look. They could do anything they wanted to...."

Corouda searched for words, and picked a burr from the dark-brown sleeve of his shirt.

Jary shifted on the rock, shifted again. "Simeu Institute protects me. And Orr n - needs me. I'd have to make him angrier than he ever has been before he'd throw me out." He met Corouda's eyes again, strangely resentful.

"Piper!"

Jary stood up in sudden reflex at the sound of Orr's voice. Corouda saw that he looked relieved, and realized that relief was the main emotion in his own mind. Hell, even if Orr would sell Jary, or loan him, or disown him - how did he know the other wardens would accept it? Xena might, if she was willing to act on her rhetoric. But Albe wasn't even apologetic about causing Jary to fall....

Jary had gone past him without a word, starting back toward Orr's lab.

"Jary!" Corouda called after him suddenly. "I still think Piper Alvarian Jary deserved to be punished. But I think they're punishing the wrong man."