"Card, Orson Scott - Heal Thyself" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

HEAL THYSELF
by Orson Scott Card



There's a limit to how much you can shield your children from the harsh
realities of life. But you can't blame parents who try. Especially when
it's something you have to go out of your way to discuss. My parents assure
me that they would have talked about it someday, but it's not like the birds
and the bees-there's not a certain age when you have to know. They were
letting it slide. I was a curious kid. I had already asked questions that
could have led there. They dodged. They waffled. I understand.

But then my childhood friend, Elizio, died of complications from his leukemia
vaccination. I had been given mine on the same day, right after him, after
jostling in line for twenty-minutes with the rest of our class of ten-year-olds.
Nobody else got sick. We didn't know anything was wrong with Elizio, either,
not for months. And then the radiation and the chemotherapy; primitive
holdovers from an era when medicine was almost indistinguishable from the
tortures of the Inquisition. Nothing worked. Elizio died. He was eleven by
then. A slow passage into the grave. And I demanded to know why.

They started to talk about God, but I told them I knew about heaven and I
wasn't worried about Elizio's soul. I wanted to know why there wasn't some
better way to prevent diseases than infecting us with semi-killed
pseudoviruses mixed with antigen stimulants. Was this the best the human
race could do? Didn't God give us brains so we could solve these things?
Oh, I was full of righteous wrath.

That was when they told me that it was time for me to take a trip to the
North American Wild Animal Park What did that have to do with my question?
It will all become clear, they said. But I should see with my own eyes. Thus
they turned from telling me nothing to telling me everything. Were they wise?
I know this much: I was angry at the universe, a deep anger that was born of
fear. My dear friend Elizio had been taken from me because our medicine was
so primitive. Therefore anyone could die. My parents. My little sisters.
My own children someday. Nothing was secure. And it pissed me off. The way
I felt, the way I was acting, I think they believed that nothing but a
complete answer, a visual experience, could restore my sense that this was,
if not a perfect world, then at least the best one possible.

We left Saltillo that weekend, taking the high-speed train that connected
Monterrey to Los Angeles. We got off in El Paso, the southern gateway to
the park During the half-hour trip, I tried to make sense of the brochures
about the park, all the pictures, the guidebooks. But it was dear to me,
even at the age of eleven, that something was being left out. That I was
getting the child's version of what the park contained. All that the
brochures described was a vast tract of savannas, filled with wild animals
living in their natural habitat, though it was an odd mixture of African,