[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

only family that he ever had. He'll die anyway, soon enough. Why not let him go
with your love and blessing in his ears, instead of with your rage and grief
tearing at him, trying to hold him here?"
"You spin a pretty story," said Novinha. "But in the end, you're asking me to
give him to Jane."
"As you said," Valentine answered. "All the stories are fictions. What matters
is which fiction you believe."
CHAPTER 9
 IT SMELLS LIKE LIFE TO ME
"Why do you say that I am alone?
My body is with me wherever I am,
telling me endless stories
of hunger and satisfaction,
weariness and sleep,
eating and drinking and breathing and life.
With such company
who could ever be alone?
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
And even when my body wears away
and leaves only some tiny spark
I will not be alone
for the gods will see my small light
tracing the dance of woodgrain on the floor
and they will know me,
they will say my name
and I will rise."
from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao
Dying, dying, dead.
At the end of her life among the ansible links there was some mercy. Jane's
panic at the losing of herself began to ebb, for though she still knew that she
was losing and had lost much, she no longer had the capacity to remember what it
was. When she lost her links to the ansibles that let her monitor the jewels in
Peter's and Miro's ears she didn't even notice. And when at last she clung to
the few last strands of ansibles that would not be shutting down, she could not
think of anything, could not feel anything except the need to cling to these
last strands even though they were too small to hold her, even though her hunger
could never be satisfied with these.
I don't belong here.
Not a thought, no, there wasn't enough of her left for anything so difficult as
consciousness. Rather it was a hunger, a vague dissatisfaction, a restlessness
that beset her when she had run up and down the link from Jakt's ansible to the
Lusitanian landside ansible to the ansible on the shuttle that served Miro and
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Val, up and down, end to end, a thousand times, a million times, nothing
changing, nothing to accomplish, nothing to build, no way to grow. I don't
belong here.
For if there was one attribute that defined the difference between aiúas that
came Inside and those that remained forever Outside, it was that underlying need
to grow, to be part of something large and beautiful, to belong. Those that had
no such need would never be drawn as Jane had been drawn, three thousand years
before, to the web that the hive queens had made for her. Nor would any of the
aiúas that became hive queens or their workers, pequeninos male and female,
humans weak and strong; nor even those aiúas that, feeble in capacity but
faithful and predictable, became the sparks whose dances did not show up in even
the most sensitive instruments until they became so complicated that humans
could identify their dance as the behavior of quarks, of mesons, of light
particulate or waved. All of them needed to be part of something and when they
belonged to it they rejoiced: What I am is us, what we do together is myself.
But they were not all alike, these aiúas, these unmade beings who were both
building blocks and builders. The weak and fearful ones reached a certain point
and either could not or dared not grow further. They would take their
satisfaction from being at the edges of something beautiful and fine, from
playing some small role. Many a human, many a pequenino reached that point and
let others direct and control their lives, fitting in, always fitting in -- and
that was good, there was a need for them. Ua lava: they had reached the point
where they could say, Enough.
Jane was not one of them. She could not be content with smallness or simplicity.
And having once been a being of a trillion parts, connected to the greatest
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
doings of a three-specied universe, now, shrunken, she could not be content. She
knew that she had memories if only she could remember them. She knew that she
had work to do if only she could find those millions of subtle limbs that once
had done her bidding. She was too much alive for this small space. Unless she
found something to engage her, she could not continue to cling to the last thin [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]