Butler, Octavia - Dawn

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2024-12-07 5 0 648.99KB 212 页 5.9玖币
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* Scanned by Usurper, June 2000. Version 1.0.
and legs in flumes of minute, exquisite pains.
When her body calmed and became reconciled to reanimation,
she looked around. The room seemed dimly lit, though she had
never Awakened to dimness before. She corrected her thinking. The
room did not only seem dim, it was dim. At an earlier Awakening,
she had decided that reality was whatever happened, whatever she
perceived. It had occurred to her—how many times?—that she
might be insane or drugged, physically ill or injured. None of that
mattered. It could not matter while she was confined this way, kept
helpless, alone, and ignorant.
She sat up, swayed dizzily, then turned to look at the rest of the
room.
The walls were light-colored—white or gray, perhaps. The bed
was what it had always been: a solid platform that gave slightly to
the touch and that seemed to grow from the floor. There was, across
the room, a doorway that probably led to a bathroom. She was
usually given a bathroom. Twice she had not been, and in her
windowless, doorless cubicle, she had been forced simply to choose
a corner.
She went to the doorway, peered through the uniform dimness,
and satisfied herself that she did, indeed, have a bathroom. This
one had not only a toilet and a sink, but a shower. Luxury.
What else did she have?
Very little. There was another platform perhaps a foot higher
than the bed. It could have been used as a table, though there was
no chair. And there were things on it. She saw the food first. It was
the usual lumpy cereal or stew, of no recognizable flavor, contained
in an edible bowl that would disintegrate if she emptied it and did
not eat it.
And there was something beside the bowl. Unable to see it
clearly, she touched it.
Cloth! A folded mound of clothing. She snatched it up, dropped it
she had at any other time in her captivity, it was a false security
she knew, but she had learned to savor any pleasure, any
supplement to her self-esteem that she could glean.
Opening and closing her jacket, her hand touched the long scar
across her abdomen. She had acquired it somehow between her
second and third Awakenings, had examined it fearfully, wondering
what had been done to her. What had she lost or gained, and why?
And what else might be done?
She did not own herself any longer. Even her flesh could be cut
and stitched without her consent or knowledge.
It enraged her during later Awakenings that there had been
moments when she actually felt grateful to her mutilators for letting
her sleep through whatever they bad done to her—and for doing it
well enough to spare her pain or disability later.
She rubbed the scar, tracing its outline. Finally she sat on the
bed and ate her bland meal, finishing the bowl as well, more for a
change of texture than to satisfy any residual hunger. Then she
began the oldest and most futile of her activities: a search for some
crack, some sound of hollowness, some indication of a way out of
her prison.
She had done this at every Awakening. At her first Awakening,
she had called out during her search. Receiving no answer, she had
shouted, then cried, then cursed until her voice was gone. She bad
pounded the walls until her bands bled and became grotesquely
swollen.
There had not been a whisper of response. Her captors spoke
when they were ready and not before. They did not show themselves
at all. She remained sealed in her cubicle and their voices came to
her from above like the light. There were no visible speakers of any
kind, just as there was no single spot from which light originated.
The entire ceiling seemed to be a speaker and a light—and perhaps
a ventilator since the air remained fresh. She imagined herself to be
Yes, but he was gone, long gone, beyond their reach, beyond
their prison.
Had she had children?
Oh god. One child, long gone with his father. One son. Gone. If
there were an afterworld, what a crowded place it must be now.
Had she had siblings? That was the word they used. Siblings.
Two brothers and a sister, probably dead along with the rest of
her family. A mother, long dead, a father, probably dead, various
aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews... probably dead.
What work had she done?
None. Her son and her husband had been her work for a few
brief years. After the auto accident that killed them, she had gone
back to college, there to decide what else she might do with her life.
Did she remember the war?
Insane question. Could anyone who had lived through the war
forget it? A handful of people tried to commit humanicide. They had
nearly succeeded. She had, through sheer luck, managed to
survive—only to be captured by heaven knew who and imprisoned.
She had offered to answer their questions if they let her out of her
cubical. They refused.
She offered to trade her answers for theirs: Who were they? Why
did they hold her? Where was she? Answer for answer. Again, they
refused.
So she refused them, gave them no answers, ignored the tests,
physical and mental, that they tried to put her through. She did not
know what they would do to her. She was terrified that she would
be hurt, punished. But she felt she had to risk bargaining, try to
gain something, and her only currency was cooperation.
They neither punished her nor bargained. They simply ceased to
talk to her.
Food continued to appear mysteriously when she napped. Water
still flowed from the bathroom faucets. The light still shone. But
not be as thick as the walls. It might even be glass or thin plastic.
She never found out.
She worked out a whole series of physical exercises and would
have done them daily if she had had any way of distinguishing one
day from the next or day from night. As it was, she did them after
each of her longer naps.
She slept a lot and was grateful to her body for responding to her
alternating moods of fear and boredom by dozing frequently. The
small, painless awakenings from these naps eventually began to
disappoint her as much as had the greater Awakening.
The greater Awakening from what? Drugged sleep? What else
could it be? She had not been injured in the war; had not requested
or needed medical care. Yet here she was.
She sang songs and remembered books she had read, movies
and television shows she had seen, family stories she had heard,
bits of her own life that had seemed so ordinary while she was free
to live it. She made up stories and argued both sides of questions
she had once been passionate about, anything!
More time passed. She held out, did not speak directly to her
captors except to curse them. She offered no cooperation. There
were moments when she did not know why she resisted. What
would she be giving up if she answered her captors’ questions?
What did she have to lose beyond misery, isolation, and silence? Yet
she held out.
There came a time when she could not stop talking to herself,
when it seemed that every thought that occurred to her must be
spoken aloud. She would make desperate efforts to be quiet but
somehow the words began to spill from her again. She thought she
would lose her sanity; had already begun to lose it. She began to
cry.
Eventually, as she sat on the floor rocking, thinking about losing
her mind, and perhaps talking about it too, something was
and isolation. Even an unseen inquisitor was preferable.
The questions became more complex, actually became
conversations during later Awakenings. Once, they put a child in
with her—a small boy with long, straight black hair and smoky-
brown skin, paler than her own. He did not speak English and he
was terrified of her. He was only about five years old—a little older
than Ayre, her own son. Awakening beside her in this strange place
was probably the most frightening thing the little boy had ever
experienced.
He spent many of his first hours with her either hiding in the
bathroom or pressed into the corner farthest from her. It took her a
long time to convince him that she was not dangerous. Then she
began teaching him English—and he began teaching her whatever
language he spoke. Sharad was his name. She sang songs to him
and be learned them instantly. He sang them back to her in almost
accentless English. He did not understand why she did not do the
same when he sang her his songs.
She did eventually learn the songs. She enjoyed the exercise.
Anything new was treasure.
Sharad was a blessing even when he wet the bed they shared or
became impatient because she failed to understand him quickly
enough. He was not much like Ayre in appearance or temperament,
but she could touch him. She could not remember when she had
last touched someone. She had not realized how much she had
missed it. She worried about him and wondered bow to protect him.
Who knew what their captors had done to him—or what they would
do? But she bad no more power than he did. At her next
Awakening, he was gone. Experiment completed.
She begged them to let him come back, but they refused. They
said he was with his mother. She did not believe them. She
imagined Sharad locked alone in his own small cubicle, his sharp,
retentive mind dulling as time passed.
spoke, she realized the voice bad not come from above as it always
had before. She sat up quickly and looked around. In one corner
she found the shadowy figure of a man, thin and long-haired.
Was he the reason for the clothing, then? He seemed to be
wearing a similar outfit. Something to take off when the two of them
got to know each other better? Good god.
“I think,” she said softly, “that you might be the last straw.”
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said.
“No. Of course you’re not.”
“I’m here to take you outside?’
Now she stood up, staring hard at him, wishing for more light.
Was he making a joke? Laughing at her?
“Outside to what?”
“Education. Work. The beginning of a new life.”
She took a step closer to him, then stopped. He scared her
somehow. She could not make herself approach him. “Something is
wrong,” she said. “Who are you?”
He moved slightly. “And what am I?”
She jumped because that was what she had almost said.
“I’m not a man,” he said. “I’m not a human being.”
She moved back against the bed, but did not sit down. “Tell me
what you are.”
“I’m here to tell you. . . and ‘show you. Will you look at me now?”
Since she was looking at him—it-—she frowned. “The light—’’
“It will change when you’re ready.”
“You’re. . . what? From some other world?”
“From a number of other worlds. You’re one of the few English
speakers who never considered that she might be in the hands of
extraterrestrials.”
“I did consider it,” Lilith whispered. “Along with the possibility
that I might be in prison, in an insane asylum, in the hands of the
FBI, the CIA, or the KGB. The other possibilities seemed marginally
accustomed to any number of ugly faces to remaining in her cage.
“All right,” she said. “Show me.”
The lights brightened as she had supposed they would, and what
had seemed to be a tall, slender man was still humanoid, but it had
no nose—no bulge, no nostrils—just flat, gray skin. It was gray all
over—pale gray skin, darker gray hair on its head that grew down
around its eyes and ears and at its throat. There was so much hair
across the eyes that she wondered how the creature could see. The
long, profuse ear hair seemed to grow out of the ears as well as
around them. Above, it joined the eye hair, and below and behind, it
joined the head hair. The island of throat hair seemed to move
slightly, and it occurred to her that that might be where the
creature breathed—a kind of natural tracheostomy.
Lilith glanced at the humanoid body, wondering how humanlike
it really was. “I don’t mean any offense,” she said, “but are you male
or female?”
“It’s wrong to assume that I must be a sex you’re familiar with,”
it said, “but as it happens, I’m male.”
Good. “It” could become “he” again. Less awkward.
“You should notice,” he said, “that what you probably see as hair
isn’t hair at all. I have no hair. The reality seems to bother
humans.”
‘“What?’’
“Come closer and look.”
She did not want to be any closer to him. She had not known
what held her back before. Now she was certain it was his
alienness, his difference, his literal unearthliness. She found herself
still unable to take even one more step toward him.
“Oh god,” she whispered. And the hair—the whatever-it-was---
moved. Some of it seemed to blow toward her as though in a wind—
though there was no stirring of air in the room.
She frowned, strained to see, to understand. Then, abruptly, she
摘要：

*ScannedbyUsurper,June2000.Version1.0.andlegsinflumesofminute,exquisitepains.Whenherbodycalmedandbecamereconciledtoreanimation,shelookedaround.Theroomseemeddimlylit,thoughshehadneverAwakenedtodimnessbefore.Shecorrectedherthinking.Theroomdidnotonlyseemdim,itwasdim.AtanearlierAwakening,shehaddecidedth...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：212 页 大小：648.99KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-07

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