"Card, Orson Scott - Short Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

Card, Orson Scott - America.txt
AMERICA
By Orson Scott Card
[19 jan 2001 - scanned for #bookz, proofread and released - v1]
The difference between Latin America and North America's United States has always
been vast; the first being in virtual colonial aspect to the Empire of the Dollar.
Now beyond the border between Mexico and the U.S.A. there lives another race, that
of the native Americans miscalled Indians. The majority of the inhabitants of those
countries are among the dispossessed of the world. This may change; indeed, as
history always calls the tune, no matter how long or in what fashion it takes, it
will change.
Sam Monson and Anamari Boagente had two encounters in their lives, forty years
apart. The first encounter lasted for several weeks in the high Amazon jungle, the
village of Agualinda. The second was for only an hour near the ruins of the Glen
Canyon Dam, on the border between Navaho country and the State of Deseret.
When they met the first time, Sam was a scrawny teenager from Utah and Anamari was a
middle-aged spinster Indian from Brazil. When they met the second time, he was
governor of Deseret, the last European state in America, and she was, to some
people's way of thinking, the mother of God. It never occurred to anyone that they
had ever met before, except me. I saw it plain as day, and pestered Sam until he
told me the whole story. Now Sam is dead and she's long gone, and I'm the only one
who knows the truth. I thought for a long time that I'd take this story untold to my
grave, but I see now that I can't do that. The way I see it, I won't be allowed to
die until I write this down. All my real work was done long since, so why else am I
alive? I figure the land has kept me breathing so I can tell the story of its
victory, and it has kept you alive so you can hear it. Gods are like that. It isn't
enough for them to run everything. They want to be famous, too.
Agualinda, Amazonas
Passengers were nothing to her. Anamari only cared about helicopters when they
brought medical supplies. This chopper carried a precious packet of benaxidene;
Anamari barely noticed the skinny, awkward boy who sat by the crates, looking
hostile. Another Yanqui who doesn't want to be stuck out in the jungle. Nothing new
about that. Norteamericanos were almost invisible to Anamari by now. They came and
went.
It was the Brazilian government people she had to worry about, the petty bureaucrats
suffering through years of virtual exile in Mannaus, working out their frustration
by being petty tyrants over the helpless Indians. No I'm sorry we don't have any
more penicillin, no more syringes, what did you do with the AIDS vaccine we gave you
three years ago? Do you think we're made of money here? Let them come to town if
they want to get well. There's a hospital in Sao Paulo de Olivenca, send them there,
we're not going to turn you into a second hospital out there in the middle of
nowhere, not for a village of a hundred filthy Baniwas, it's not as if you're a
doctor, you're just an old withered up Indian woman yourself, you never graduated
from the medical schools, we can't spare medicines for you. It made them feel so
important, to decide whether or not an Indian child would live or die. As often as
not they passed sentence of death by refusing to send supplies. It made them feel
powerful as God.
Anamari knew better than to protest or argue-it would only make that bureaucrat
likelier to kill again in the future. But sometimes, when the need was great and the
medicine was common, Anamari would go to the Yanqui geologists and ask if they had