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that might have been an unfortunate zoo accident or roadkill for all she knew.
The problem wasn't that she was going around gulping down the squirming
critters or picking at the festering dead meat. She'd long since passed the
point of being revolted at that aspect.
The problem was, she really liked them.
What she didn't like was how even the apartment and its window had offered
more attractions than this dump, which was so boring, it risked driving her
into the madness she'd been fighting all this time. The only entrance or exit
was at the top of the cage, a good four meters beyond her head. The
occasional cage attendant would come in now and then on a rope ladder, which
was impossible for her to manage, without arms to hold on to it with. The
ladder was taken up when they left, anyway. The glass was as thick and
unbreakable as she'd ever seen, and there wasn't a chance of getting through
it.
She was even more worried that they were going to breed her with a male, as
Campos had threatened. It was what zoos did, after all, but what would it do
to her? She still had her mind, she could think as a human even if the
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thoughts were dulled by who knew how long in this incredible boredom, but if
she just let her mind wander into fantasy, the bird genes just took over.
What if they brought in a male whatever it was and she got knocked up? Would
she start building -a nest and sitting on eggs and thinking about little
squawkers? The Well was notorious for not making it easy, but damn it, it
shouldn't make it impossible. But try as she might, she hadn't been able to
see a single way out of this mess.
What was even more depressing, was that if there was a way for her to get
free, flat out she could make maybe a hundred meters an hour, and not for
very long. She would also need to spend a lot of time keeping the metabolism
going with food. No wonder this bird was rare. Figuring at maybe a kilometer
a day if she was lucky, she could make the Avenue and the equator in, oh,
maybe three or four years under absolutely perfect conditions. Yeah.
And so she was quite startled when, in the early evening after the zoo had
closed for the day, she heard the cage door open and saw not the usual
attendant or the vet but the new model Campos climb down the ladder.
"Hello, my pretty birdie," she said with mock concern. "You needn't play with
me. I know you don't need the drug anymore, and I'm not someone to trifle with
right now."
"Are you here to taunt me?" Mavra asked her, despondent as ever. "Oh, my, no!
In fact, I am here as your liberator, believe it or not. It seems that you
have become too popular for your own good and are far too valuable to be left
in a musty old zoo. We are going on a little trip, you and I, along with my
other pretty little treasure, and we will not be back for quite a while."
"You're taking me out of here?" Mavra's heart soared, even though she didn't
expect to be going to a nicer place.
"Yes, indeed. In fact, Algon, he's a nice attendant here, will help you up out
of the cage. He is a sucker for a pretty face and a few credits. Here. Get
into this netting, and then I will tell him to pull you up."
Mavra suddenly felt a little contrary. "You can't lift me. What if I refuse?"
"Refuse? You mean you like it in here?"
"Not particularly, but they feed me regularly. You wouldn't go to all this
trouble if you just needed to skip town. Somebody's got a line on what you did
to me, haven't they?"
"You are quite sophisticated for a jungle primitive, aren't you? Yes, my
precious, they are looking for you, but it will do you no good to hope. Even
if they found you, you would just be kept here in a cage much like this. They
might even keep you right here, although with a much better lock. I suspect,
however, they would take you south, perhaps very far south. I, on the
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other hand, am going north, at least for now. Better the devil you know than
the devil you do not." Her tone grew suddenly lower, more menacing. "Besides,
you little shit, if you don't do it right now I will take one of these rocks,
beat you into unconsciousness, and roll you into it.
Now, get in!"
Mavra didn't have any doubts about Campos doing exactly that, so she complied.
Out and going north ... There was some hope again. Maybe she was too hard on
the Well. One had to have patience with the gods before they answered one's [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]