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

this or that. Sometimes they would share, but if they didn't, they wouldn't lift a
finger to get any. They were not tyrants like the Brazilian bureaucrats. They just
didn't give a damn. They were there to make money.
That was what Anamari saw when she looked at the sullen light-haired boy in the
helicopter-another Norteamericano, just like all the other Norteamericanos, only
younger.
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Card, Orson Scott - America.txt
She had the benaxidene, and so she immediately began spreading word that all the
Baniwas should come for injections. It was a disease that had been introduced during
the war between Guyana and Venezuela two years ago; as usual, most of the victims
were not citizens of either country, just the Indios of the jungle, waking up one
morning with their joints stiffening, hardening until no movement was possible.
Benaxidene was the antidote, but you had to have it every few months or your joints
would stiffen up again. As usual, the bureaucrats had diverted a shipment and there
were a dozen Baniwas bedridden in the village. As usual, one or two of the Indians
would be too far gone for the cure; one or two of their joints would be stiff for
the rest of their lives. As usual, Anamari said little as she gave the injections,
and the Baniwas said less to her.
It was not until the next day that Anamari had time to notice the young Yanqui boy
wandering around the village. He was wearing rumpled white clothing, already
somewhat soiled with the greens and browns of life along the rivers of the Amazon
jungle. He showed no sign of being interested in anything, but an hour into her
rounds, checking on the results of yesterday's benaxidene treatments, she became
aware that he was following her.
She turned around in the doorway of the government-built hovel and faced him. "O que
e'?" she demanded. What do you want?
To her surprise, he answered in halting Portuguese. Most of these Yanquis never
bothered to learn the language at all, expecting her and everybody else to speak
English. "Posso ajudar?" he asked. Can I help?
"Nao," she said. "Mas pode olhar." You can watch.
He looked at her in bafflement.
She repeated her sentence slowly, enunciating clearly. "Pode olhar."
"Eu?" Me?
"Voce, sim. And I can speak English."
"I don't want to speak English."
"Tanto faz," she said. Makes no difference.
He followed her into the hut. It was a little girl, lying naked in her own feces.
She had palsy from a bout with meningitis years ago, when she was an infant, and
Anamari figured that the girl would probably be one of the ones for whom the
benaxidene came too late. That's how things usually worked-the weak suffer most. But
no, her joints were flexing again, and the girl smiled at them, that heartbreakingly
happy smile that made palsy victims so beautiful at times.
So. Some luck after all, the benaxidene had been in time for her.
Anamari took the lid off the clay waterjar that stood on the one table in the room,
and dipped one of her clean rags in it. She used it to wipe the girl, then lifted
her frail, atrophied body and pulled the soiled sheet out from under her. On
impulse, she handed the sheet to the boy.
"Leva fora," she said. And, when he didn't understand, "Take it outside."
He did not hesitate to take it, which surprised her. "Do you want me to wash it?"