"Casil,_Amy_Sterling_-_To_Kiss_the_Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Casil Amy Sterling)

"Good," John said. "We're doing the next one right now."
"Viddy, too?"
"Viddy too. And the first thousand are special release. The kiddies get Star Bars with every copy and the first fifty get a T-Shirt."
"Tres Fab," Mel said. "I wish I could see it," she said. She'd heard John's music, but wanted so desperately to see the videos. John was a viddy star musician. Played guitar and sitar. Hana, the morning nurse, had told Mel that John was "a God ... so totally fab."
"Look, Mel," John said. "Don't worry about your Mum. Or your brothers. Just go. If I had the chance, I'd take it in a heartbeat."
Mel shook her head. "I know. You're right," she said. They wouldn't wait forever. She wasn't the only one who could make the trip. There had to be lots of ... cripples. Waiting for the chance. Sitting in their chairs and drooling, waiting for their number to come up, for ISA to pick them and make them something like whole again. No. That wasn't it. Not whole, but something ... different. Turn the whole stinking, spastic body off. Adapt the brain which was functioning, discard the body that wasn't, and shoot it off to the stars. Live forever and go where no man could ever go. Not a whole one, anyway. Small things like brains could go in hardened housings. Big things like bodies couldn't. Or shouldn't.
"Mel, why on earth are you waiting?" John asked.
Because of you, John, Mel thought.
"I know it doesn't hurt," John said. "I saw a vid, all about it. It's like magic, how they put you in the probe."
Mel flailed until she found John's hand where it rested near her leg. His warm fingers stroked her cold palm. "I'm afraid," she told him, even though that wasn't true. She couldn't possibly say the truth.
"That's natural," he said.
Her head began to roll around, then her chin fell on the damp bib.
"I asked them if I would be able to see again," she continued. "They haven't answered me."
"I'm sure you'll be able," John said, squeezing her hand. "You'll have better senses than any normal person."
"I guess that's better than having the senses of an abnormal person," Mel said.
John laughed loudly. Mel sensed that his laughter was forced. "That's what I love about you," he said. "You've got a smashing sense of humor."
Didn't all cripples?
"Take me for a walk on the patio," Mel said, folding her hands in her lap. "You can smoke there. I don't mind." John was a very good Friendly Visitor. He put his hand on her shoulder and guided her gently as they went.
* * * *
Mum brought sandwiches packed in a wicker basket. Mel smelled the sandwiches -- pressed liver and spirulina paste, she thought -- and also smelled the basket, hearing the crackle as Mum opened it. She'd taken Mel out across the wide field, where the pollen made Mel sneeze, stopping when they reached the small hillock in the middle. The sun burned the part on the top of Mel's head. She asked for a napkin. Sighing, Mum covered Mel's hair and laid out the food.
"Can you chew today, dear?" Mum asked.
Mel nodded. She seldom used the voiceboard with Mum. Mum preferred it that way; she liked Mel to use the baby talk and the grunting which had been all Mel could manage for most of her life.
"How are the boys?"
"Oh, fine. Jack's got a new girlfriend. Peter's still into his electric trains." Mum fed Mel a piece of the sandwich. She had been right: it was liver sausage and stale-tasting spirulina paste.
"How about Davey?"
"Oh, the same," Mum said. This meant that Davey hadn't quit using. Davey was two years younger than Mel. He was tall and athletic, but he'd started in with drugs at the age of twelve and had never held a job for longer than two weeks. Davey was Mum's favorite.
Mum sat by Mel's chair, spreading out her skirt with a rustle of fabric. "Listen," she said. "About your e-mail."
Mel deliberately pushed some chewed sandwich paste out of her mouth and made a choking noise. Mum got up, knees crackling, to wipe Mel's face.
"Dear, I don't think you should do this. It's horribly dangerous. And you'll never..."
"Never what?" Mel said through her voiceboard.
Mum roughly wiped the sandwich paste away, then stuffed another piece in Mel's mouth. "You know what I mean."
"You mean that will be it once they do the implants and get rid of my body."
"Yes. Don't be smart."
"What does it matter, Mum? What good is my body now?"
"Dear, we've been over it. Don't you think if they can send a ship to another star, they might not find a cure for you? What if you do this, and the next day they come up with an operation which would make you..."
"Normal?" Mel said. "They can give me a prosthesis body now, Mum. But where would the money come from?"
Mum was weeping. "Christ on His cross, Mel," she said. "Why do you always have to throw it in everyone's face?"
Mel said nothing. She thought of John, the way he smelled. She wanted to see his face, all fab, the way the nurse Hana described him. She imagined herself normal, wearing a white seersucker dress, running across the field with John, laughing. John's hair was long -- she had touched it. Hana had told Mel it was dark brown and shone in the light. Soft, and a little bit curly. Mel's hair was thin and patchy, a muddy dark blond. It had gotten worse, since she'd gone blind. Before, she had been able to comb it on her best days; put ribbons and bows in it. Now, it was chopped off just below her ears, so it wouldn't fall in her face or get nasty with bits of food or drool. Practical, the way things needed to be at the Mary-Le-Bow Center.
"I'm going to do it," Mel said through the voiceboard, glad of its impersonal drone.
"Mel!"
"Don't argue, Mum." Mel remembered what John had said, about her being old enough. She wished she could have said it with his style, his carefree flair.
Mum's arms were around her. Mel's face was pressed uncomfortably between Mum's breast and her bony shoulder. "I'll never see you again, luv. Not if they send you off on that ship."
Straining to move her arm, Mel got one hand on the voiceboard. "You never come unless there's something wrong anyway," she said, knowing what it would do to Mum.
"Oh, Mel," Mum sobbed. "How can you hurt me so?"
"John says I should go for it," Mel said. The voiceboard droned on. "I think I will," she said, although she did not mean it. Going would mean leaving John.
* * * *
The ISA counseling specialist was an American. Mel supposed that she should have expected that. The Americans had pioneered the technology for the space probes. No normal bodies could survive the trip to other stars, with the hard radiation and all the other myriad challenges. So, the essential part of people -- their brains -- had been placed in hardened housings and intimately connected to the probe itself. It was one way to do it. Not the only way -- just a way -- to explore and discover ahead of the complex and costly generation ships which would follow.
Because of the danger involved, condemned criminals were to have been the initial probe controllers. But that hadn't gone over. Why not give people a chance who deserved it? That was the public outcry, about the time Mel had gone blind. The ISA had decided that people like Mel should be selected, not criminals.
If you were a registered applicant and your number came up in the lottery, you had thirty days to decide. If you declined, your chance went to someone else: another waiting cripple. You couldn't be older than twenty-five. You couldn't be married, and couldn't have any children. If you were under legal age, your guardian had to give permission. Mel knew all this, but it was repeated for her during her orientation. She didn't know why she was surprised when the ISA people came to the Mary-Le-Bow Center. She supposed it was easier to bring the equipment and the specialists to the cripple, rather than transferring her.
The ISA counseling specialist, who had a western twang which Mel thought was very cowboy-like, told her how the implants worked.