"Kate Wilhelm - Funeral" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

Plucking bones, brown bones with horny nails.

Water. Girl, give me water. Pretty pretty. You would have been killed, you would have. Pretty. The last
time they left no one over ten. No one at all. Ten to twenty-five.

Pretty. Carla said it to herself. Pretty. She visualized it as p-r-i-t-y. Pity with an r. Scanning the
dictionary for p-r-i-t-y. Nothing. Pretty. Afraid of shiny, pretty faces. Young, pretty faces.

The trembling was all through Carla. Two hours. Eternity. She had stood here forever, would die here,
unmoving, trembling, aching. A sigh and the sound of a body falling softly to the floor. Soft body
crumbling so easily. Carla didn't turn her head. It must be Luella. So frightened of the mummy. She'd had
nightmares every night since Madam Westfall's death. What made a body stay upright, when it fell so
easily? Take it out, the thing that held it together, and down, down. Just to let go, to know what to take
out and allow the body to fall like that into sleep. Teachers moved across her field of vision, two of them
in their black gowns. Sush-sush. Returned with Luella, or someone, between them. No sound.
Sush-sush.

├║├║├║├║├║

The new learning cubicle was an exact duplicate of the old one. Cot, learning machine, chair,
partitioned-off commode and washbasin. And new, the notebook and pen. Carla never had had a
notebook and pen before. There was the stylus that was attached to the learning machine, and the
lighted square in which to write, that then vanished into the machine. She turned the blank pages of the
notebook, felt the paper between her fingers, tore a tiny corner off one of the back pages, examined it
closely, the jagged edge, the texture of the fragment; she tasted it. She studied the pen just as minutely; it
had a pointed, smooth end, and it wrote black. She made a line, stopped to admire it, and crossed it
with another line. She wrote very slowly, "Carla," started to put down her number, the one on her
bracelet, then stopped in confusion. She never had considered it before, but she had no last name, none
that she knew. She drew three heavy lines over the two digits she had put down.

At the end of the two hours of meditation she had written her name a number of times, had filled three
pages with it, in fact, and had written one of the things that she could remember hearing from the grey
lips of Madam Westfall: "Non-citizens are the property of the state."

├║├║├║├║├║

The next day the citizens started to file past the dais. Carla breathed deeply, trying to sniff the fragrance
of the passing Ladies, but they were too distant. She watched their feet, clad in shoes of rainbow colors:
pointed toes, stiletto heels; rounded toes, carved heels; satin, sequined slippers.. And just before her
duty ended for the day, the Males started to enter the room.

She heard a gasp, Luella again. She didn't faint this time, merely gasped once. Carla saw the feet and
legs at the same time and she looked up to see a male citizen. He was very tall and thick, and was
dressed in the blue-and-white clothing of a Doctor of Law. He moved into the sunlight and there was a
glitter from gold at his wrists and his neck, and the gleam of a smooth polished head. He turned past the
dais and his eyes met Carla's. She felt herself go lightheaded and hurriedly she ducked her head and
clenched her hands. She thought he was standing still, looking at her, and she could feel her heart
thumping hard. Her relief arrived then and she crossed the room as fast as she could without appearing
indecorous.