"epi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)
NOONTIDE NIGHT - Epilogue
Epilogue
11:55 P.M., Sunday, December 31, 2000
Sausalito, California
Nate watched the holiday lights on the Bay Bridge from the
deck of Morgan and Desiree's hillside townhouse in Sausalito. He
was mesmerized by the slow, steady flow of distant headlights.
Berkeley and Oakland twinkled across the water. In the
background he could hear the crashing and sucking of the Bay.
Laughter and party noise ebbed and flowed from the soiree inside.
Morgan stood by the bar, uncorking champagne and filling glasses.
He'd taken up running and swimming, he'd said, and looked like
a Sports Illustrated model in his white turtleneck. Desiree
circulated, throwing her head back in mirth, smiling continuously,
eyes sparkling to match the glitter of her '20s flapper-girl dress.
Nate had stepped out to get a breath of air. The last year
seemed like it had been nothing but crowds of people. Peace and
quiet were celebration enough. Christmas without Amber had
been trying. Russ and Mary Beth had made him feel at home; still,
with so many adults and children underfoot, he'd wanted a retreat
from the hubbub. Nonetheless, he'd accepted Morgan's offer to fly
out for the new year. Morgan had wanted to pay for his visit like
he was paying for those of his friends from New Zealand, but Nate
declined. He still had a ponderous chain, although, he liked to
hope, less than it was a year before. Sam was here. Littlefield
wasn't, thank God; Sam came armed with a story that Littlefield
had been transferred to the front in Iraq to dig latrines. He also
had some inside joke Nate didn't understand, about someone
Morgan and Desiree knew named Axton being assigned to work
under him. For some reason Desiree smiled, and said, "And Moab
shall be trodden down in his place, as straw is trodden down in a
dung-pit," and Morgan laughed with her.
Carmen Ortega was here, and Nguyen Nguyen. But Nate
hadn't been introduced to anyone else from the CyberCorps. He
meant to ask Morgan if he'd heard anything about the others.
They'd flown in and put up in hotels several people from New
Zealand, including a huge Maori fellow who kept doing a tongue
dance all evening, and seemed to be enjoying himself more than
anyone else. The bash must have cost them a fortune. The
champagne alone would be enough to finance a small war. As one
of the first programmers to return to the market as the CyberCorps
began mustering out the Y2K workers, Morgan had clearly done
well for himself with his new software company.
Morgan had even offered him a job, starting at $100K with
stock options in case the Internet IPO stock mania ever took off
again. "Twenty-four hour trading's been helping the markets;
Dow Jones might hit a thousand again this month. You can get in
on the ground floor..."
Nate said he'd think about it, but he knew he couldn't see his
way clear to leaving the Red Cross. He'd hired on there as a low-paid programmer after his well-behaved six months in
Leavenworth and dishonorable discharge from the CyberCorps.
He'd initially relished the thought, while in prison and helping the
Red Cross via a terminal in the work room, that Amber might find
out about his Red Cross association and decide she'd judged him
too harshly. He didn't want her back; he was well over that. He
simply hoped she might revise her opinion of him. When he got
out of prison and found out Amber hadn't had anything more to
do with the Red Cross for months, he'd joined up as an employee
anyway. In some way, he wanted his idealized version of her to
approve. And of course they needed the help. Forty percent of
businesses had failed, leaving stores boarded up and people
massively unemployed and retraining for the jobs where there
were severe labor shortages. The ground war slogged toward
Baghdad. There was plenty of healing yet to do.
This was nowhere better reflected than in their New Year's Eve
party decorating theme: Headlines from newspapers adorned the
walls. From January 1st's New York Times' "Blackout!" (which,
although printed in advance, almost nobody saw), and
"Meltdown!" (which, although printed long after the Russian
nuclear reactor had blown, too many people saw, prompting
shutdowns even of U.S. nuclear reactors certified as working), to
the New Zealand Herald's "Terrorists Get Life; Still suffering from
mysterious food poisoning" and USA Today's "Lawsuits Top $1
Trillion; No end in sight." And in a prominent, but unobtrusive,
place by the main door sat a jar with a slit in the lid, labeled
"Middlemore Neonatal Unit / Jeremy Hyland Memorial Fund."
Nate could sense that Morgan and Desiree had wrestled with
much pain in deciding if and where to place the donation jar. He
planned to slip in a check on his way out.
Morgan opened the sliding glass door to the deck and turned
on the porch light. "Hey, Nate, get on in here. It's almost time!"
Nate waved him back. "I'm fine out here."
Morgan hesitated, then slid the door closed.
Moments later an auburn-haired woman in a slinky black
dress came out to the deck, two sleek glasses of champagne in her
hand. "Hey, soldier," she said in an Australian accent. "Morgan
said you needed one of these." She handed him a glass. "My
name's Matty, by the way."
"Thanks, Matty. I'm Nate." Nate shoved his free hand in his
pocket and turned back toward the lights.
She stood next to him for a moment, hands on the railing,
gazing at the Bay. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
Nate suddenly knew Morgan had set him up. He turned
around, and sure enough, Morgan was watching out of the corner
of his eye from the living room. Morgan raised his glass in mock
toast to Nate. Nate gave him an evil eye in return.
"And what is it you do, Matty?" Nate hoped she might say
something he could find objectionable; "Sorry, Morgan, I just
couldn't go out with someone who stuffs cats for a living." For
that matter, a lot of the things people did for a living a year ago
now seemed like indulgent luxuries; would professional dog poop
picker-uppers really be a loss to society?
"Oh, bunches of things. Night engineer for a hospital—that's
where I met Desi and Morgan. I'm taking time off from grad
school—MBA in marketing—so I can work on my new company.
So mainly I'm a facilitator."
Ah, Nate thought; the latest craze. People who helped match
up companies liquidating their assets with companies who needed
specialized equipment fast. Beneath the glacial restoration of
normality the world seemed to be going through a roiling
exchange of resources, like lava seething beneath a volcanic dome.
Hmph. Nothing there to hold against her.
"By the way, Morgan said if I needed a guide around San
Francisco that you'd be available."
"Well, I—"
"You have to say yes, you know. Wouldn't be chivalrous to let
a girl go for a walkabout alone in a dangerous city."
"Well, I—"
"Good, that's settled then. Pick me up about ten tomorrow
morning?"
Nate sighed. He knew when he'd been hooked. God, she was
adorably beautiful; there was that. And clever. And not the kind
of girl who'd let some wimpy guy with a postage stamp of a hair
under his lip call her "bitch."
"I'd be delighted, madam," he said, with a bow and flourish
of his non-existent feathered hat.
She stood pensively for a moment, watching the Bay. "It's
funny, isn't it."
"What's that?"
"How it's so peaceful and calm here, and the Have's, like us,
are partying it up, when there's a depression just out there, and a
war on over there. You'd think it'd be so obvious there's a
problem that you'd see it no matter where you look."
"Sometimes people can't see what's right under their noses.
Even if you show it to them. Sometimes they don't want to see."
"Strewth! People've been acting mad as cut snakes. I sure
never expected the future to be like this when I was growing up.
2001. We were supposed to be sending HAL to Jupiter, having
colonies on the moon. And your presidents! Trying to kick out
one president 'cause of who he slept with. Then there's Saddam.
There's something ironic about one George Bush starting a war
with 'im, and another one going to finish it."
Nate sniffed. "Yeah. War's generally been good for
Republicans. I almost wonder if Clinton didn't keep the Iraqi
cyberwar quiet so long because he knew that; or Gore knew that."
"Reminds me of a newspaper quote. Some Aussie was listing
all the terrible lies American presidents have made and never got
in strife for, like Kennedy denying involvement in the Bay of Pigs,
Eisenhower denying a U-2 had been shot down, that kind of stuff.
But your congress burrs up over a lie that only has to do with sex.
So this newspaper prints, 'Thank God we got the convicts and they
got the Puritans.' The future sure is strange."
"Yeah," Nate said, "but you know what? I think we're just
about out of the woods. Sure there's lots of folks out of work, but
fewer every day. Somebody has to deliver the milk; somebody has
to restore the Sistine Chapel. I've been thinking I need to look at
things as opportunities, not problems. This rebuilding is probably
the best thing we could do to start the new millennium; our chance
to do things right."
Matty raised her glass. "Hear hear!"
Desiree suddenly opened the sliding door. "Come on you two,
it's time!"
Nate offered his arm and escorted Matty inside.
The diamond-glinting ball was dropping in Times Square like
it had in every U.S. time zone for the past three hours. "Three...
two... one... Happy New Millennium!"
Glasses clinked, people cheered, blew noisemakers, kissed.
Matty stuck her chin out, puckering her lips.
"Well, g'on, don't be shy!"
What the hell, Nate thought, downed his champagne in one
gulp, and bussed her full on the lips. She grabbed his collar and
repaid him in kind.
The thought crossed Nate's mind that the Red Cross was an
international organization. Perhaps they needed help in New
Zealand. "Matty," he said, "I think this is the beginning of a
beautiful friendship."
The party rolled on; nobody seemed to want the joyous
moment to fade. It held the promise of what could be, once the
memory of the bumpy road could be put in the past.
Before long Morgan ducked behind a counter, pulled
something out, and hid it behind his back. "Hey, everyone, listen
up! As some of you know, at most parties we have a contest.
Tonight Desiree and I have both a contest and an announcement
that we're very proud to make. You can probably guess from the
contest what the announcement is. Because of the announcement,
the contest itself is rather unusual. It will be about, oh, six months
before we announce the winner, so write your addresses with your
names on your entry. In fact, the contest is to guess what date
we'll choose the winner, and then get it in the right box." With a
"ta da!" he pulled two shoe boxes from behind his back.
One was light blue; the other was pink.
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