[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
must be constructed, and once built, will be left behind.
But why? Surely they deserve to know.
Not the way my fellow Zin see it, Lak-Tal replied bleakly. They believe
the lower castes would be unable to deal with the knowledge of their own
mortality, would abandon all work, and leave the next generation to be born in
the wild.Outside the protective walls of a citadel and therefore vulnerable.
Blue was amazed by the arrogance of it, and reminded of what had once been
referred to as the white man s burden. The notion that all of the
dark-skinned peoples who had been enslaved by the white race could
simultaneously be regarded as a burden because once enslaved, they required
some modicum of food, shelter, and medical care.
Still, such thoughts were highly ethnocentric, and Blue forced himself to put
them aside. So, how do you feel about that? About your progeny being born in
the wild, as you call it?
Lak-Tal looked surprised. How would you expect me to feel? He s trying to
kill me. I hope he dies a painful death.
That s when Blue realized that by the standards of the human race, orany race
for that matter, Lak-Tal was insane.
Page 164
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The cube was lit with dozens of candles. Some tall, some short, burning on
shelves, ledges, and the floor itself. The space might have been reminiscent
of a chapel or a church except for the racialist symbols and paraphernalia
that decorated the room.
Ivory had discovered a couple of important facts about Marta Manning. The
first was that her brother was a race traitor. And the second was that she
gave the best back rubs he d ever experienced. So good that they verged on
sexual, to his mind at least, though he doubted she felt the same way. He had
an erection, which he maintained via an almost imperceptible up-and-down
movement timed to coincide with the thrust of Marta s hands. He lay facedown
on a makeshift table while her fingers probed the musculature of his back.
The skins, those who were off-duty, napped, played cards, or cleaned their
weapons. One or two watched Marta with hunger in their eyes, wishing she would
massagetheir backs, but conscious of the fact that it would never happen.
Ivory was the alpha male for the moment, anyway and to him went the spoils.
Not sex, not as far as they knew, anyway though some of them wondered.
As for Ivory, his thoughts had started to drift, back toward the problem at
hand. He needed to take action, to move the cause forward, but how?
The skins had lived in the beast s belly for more than a week now. They had
infiltrated work parties, hung out in bars, and talked till they were blue in
the face. There had been converts, a trickle, but nothing like the wholesale
conversion he dreamed of. He needed some sort of magnet, a way to draw people
in and bind them to the dream.
Then Ivory remembered the clinic, Dr. Seeko Sool, and came in his pants.
PUGET SOUND, NEAR HELL HILL
It was night, the only time that the Crips dared to ply their trade, and
the waves made a slapping sound as they hit the side of the sixteen-foot
aluminum boat. It was cold, which meant that Wylie, Nok, Chu, and Nakambe were
well bundled up. From Darby s position in the stern they looked like black
lumps, rising and falling in front of the scattering of lights that marked
Hell Hill. Lights for which the coxswain was grateful, since they helped to
guide her in.
Due to the fact that it was impossibly dangerous to use any sort of motor,
and that the organisms they sought lay inshore, where sails were a definite
liability, the Crips relied on old-fashioned oars to move their boat forward.
Oars, which in spite of the fact that they had been greased and wrapped with
rags, still managed to squeak, an annoying sound that could travel a long way
across water.
Still, there wasn t much Darby could do about it, so like all the other
things she couldn t control, she tried to ignore it. There were other problems
to worry about, like the fact that the tiller felt sluggish, and her crew had
started to tire.
Their boat, a vessel that went by the somewhat unlikely name ofSunshine, was
so heavily laden with bins of freshly harvested shellfish that it rode low in
the water. That could prove dangerous if a southwest wind kicked up and waves
broke over the transom. Add a few gallons of seawater to their cargo and
theSunshine would capsize. Not only that, but some of her crew, all of whom
were physically challenged, were likely to drown.
Page 165
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Wylie was paralyzed below the waist, Nok had lost a leg to cancer, Nakambe
had hooks where his hands should have been, and Chu had been born with one
arm. These disabilities had saved their lives, because, with the single
exception of Darby, every single one of them had been captured by the Kan and
either released to starve or, as in the case of Chu, had managed to escape.
Now, having found each other, they were like a family, with Darby as the
able-bodied mother and a group of twenty as a family. A family that made
its living by harvesting the seafood that the Ra Na doted on and selling it
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]