（外文电子版资料）Jo Clayton - BorrowedLight.pdf

JO CLAYTON BORROWED LIGHT 1. The awakening you are not my first death, Tsoylan sang to she who lay on the sleeping platform, her breath barely stirring the air, a stranger odd and angular, paler even than the Great Mother. When the Name came into his head, evoking Her image and the Fear, he cupped his stubby hands over his eyes in the ritual see-me-not gesture, forgetting the dark spectacles and knocking them away. When his heart flutters stopped, he groped about the tile floor until he found them and fumbled them back on. Even with the dark lenses, his eyes had hurt since the beginning of this vigil, the tear ducts suppurating from the stress of sunlight like yellow acid streaming into the room. The healers said that was what the alien needed. Like the sowy, they said, she drinks from the sun and darkness starves her. You are not my first death, he sang. Nor the first whose rushing breath Becomes a shout, I wont. I will not go Her eyes opened and Tsoylan stopped his song. Kara Stavokal, he said, speaking slowly to make sure she understood. Do not be afraid. It is fate that wounded you, not we. He watched her head turn, her hands fumble about as if by touching the padded platform and the sheet pulled over her, she could call her soul from wherever it had fled. Her eyes gained focus, her groping stopped, and she began trying out her body much as a Talq would test a machine, moving part against part, evaluating the results. When she was satisfied, she swung her legs over the edge of the platform and stood up. She swayed, steadied herself. Her breathing slowed. The healers had dressed her in a white shift that came to her knees and left her arms bare. The hair on those arms was so fine he wouldnt have known it was there if he hadnt felt it on her when he was helping move her from the litter to the platform. The hair on her head was coatset, a color like that of unstained wood; it was cut close to her head, fitting like a brown cap. She