"Sarah Zettel - Kingdom of Cages" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zettel Sarah)

Tam felt it then, the dizzy sensation of watching something begin to slip
away, like a leaf in a stream, and knowing with terrified certainty that it
was one of a kind, and when it was gone there would be no more.
Everything changed today. His world, his life, his vision for his future,
everything, it all slid farther away with each heartbeat.
He also knew that this feeling, like the image of the Vastness crater,
would never leave him. The Authority had won. They had let the
Authority win. With their single act, Commander Poulos and her people
had altered the lives of every human being living on Pandora.
And the Pandorans, in turn, would change the entire world, whether they
wanted to or not.
 Part One
The New World

CHAPTER ONE

A Mud Hut in the Jungle
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It was late when Tam finally left the experiment wing and crossed Alpha
Complex's central lobby. Outside the dome, the sky's summer sapphire
hue had deepened to indigo, and the first three stars shone over the
forest, which stretched its long shadow across the marsh toward the
Alpha Complex. Silhouettes of wading birdsтАФpaddlers, skimmers, and
shimmiesтАФstood stark and still in the peach and fuchsia light.
The beauty of the sight stopped Tam. He leaned on the railing in front of
the triple-insulated windows, giving himself a minute to watch the
marsh's many dances. Fish and insects rippled the water. Bats skimmed
overhead. One of the wading birds stabbed its beak into the water and
came up with a patch of darkness, maybe a frog. Snap! The meal was
done and the bird strutted away.
It might have been Old Earth out there. It almost was. Pandora was one
of the few worlds to score a perfect ten on the Almen Compatibility
Scale.
The scene tugged at Tam. He wished, as he had on a thousand other
evenings, that he could walk out of the complex with its pillow dome,
insulation, sealed portals, and water-cooled walls. He would step into the
pink and lavender glow of the sunset, onto one of the marsh's tiny
islands, and watch the water birds in their thousands take flight all
around him.
Oh, Tam spent a great deal of time outdoors, in the villages for which he
was administrator, but those were fenced and protected areas, not the
pristine wilderness, not what he saw through the window. That beauty
remained forever out of reach, past the glass, past the fences.
Just once. Tam thought. What could it hurt?
Years of conditioning raised a surge of guilt in him at the thought, and
that guilt activated his Conscience implant.
Are you looking out the window, Tam? it asked him. Are you thinking
of walking in the marsh?
The Conscience implant couldn't actually read thoughts, but it could