"Delany, Samuel R - The Einstein Intersection 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

She laughed, and it sounded among the bells. "Where's the food and let's find a fireplace."
We found a circle of rocks down by the stream. We were going to get cookery from the compound but Nativia had a large skillet of her own so all we had to borrow were cinnamon and salt.
"Come on," Little Jon said when he came back from the water's edge. "Lobey, you gotta be entertaining. We'll converse."
"Now, hey-" Then I said to myself "aw, so what," lay down on my back and began to play my machete. She liked that because she kept smiling at me as she worked.
"Don't you got no children?" Easy asked.
Nativia was greasing the skillet with a lump of ham fat.
"One in the kage down at Live Briar. Two with a man in Ko."
"You travel a lot, yeah?" Little Jon asked.
I played a slower tune that came far away, and she smiled at me as she dumped diced meat from a palm frond into the pan. Fat danced on the hot metal.
"I travel." The smile and the wind and the mockery in her voice were delightful.
"You should find a man who travels too," Easy suggested.

He has a lot of homey type advice for everybody. Gets on my nerves sometimes.
Nativia shrugged. "Did once. We could never agree on what direction to go in. It's his kid in the kage. Guy's name was Lo Angel. A beautiful man. He could just never make up his mind where he wanted to go. And when he did, it was never where I wanted. No . . ." She pushed the browning meat across the crackling bottom. "I like good, stable, settled men who'll be there when I get back."
I began to play an old hymn-Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home. I'd learned it from a 45 when I was a kid. Nativia knew it too because she laughed in the middle of slicing a peach.
"That's me," she said. "Bill La Bailey. That's the nickname Lo Angel gave me."
She formed the meat into a ring around the edge of the pan. The nuts and vegetables went in now with a little salt water and the cover clanked on.
"How far have you traveled?" I asked, laying my knife on my stomach and stretching. Overhead, behind maple leaves, the sky was injured in the west with sunset, shadowed by east and night. "I'm going to travel soon. I want to know where there is to go."
She pushed the fruit on to one end of the frond. "I once went as far as the City. And I've even been underground to explore the source-cave."
Easy and Little Jon got very quiet.
"That's some traveling," I said. "La Dire says I have to travel because I'm different."
Nativia nodded. "That's why Lo Angel was traveling," she said, pushing back the lid again. Pungent steam ballooned and dispersed. My mouth got wet. "Most of the ones moving were different. He always said I was different too, but he would never tell me how." She pushed the vegetables into a ring against the meat and filled the center with cut fruit. Cinnamon now over the whole thing. Some of the powdered spice caught the flame that tongued the pan's rim and sparks bloomed. On went the cover.
"Yeah," I said. "La Dire won't tell me either."
Nativia looked surprised. "You mean you don't know?"
I shook my head.
"Oh, but you can-" She stopped. "La Dire is one of this town's elders, isn't she?"
"That's right."
"Maybe she's got a reason not to tell you. I talked to her just a little while the other day; she's a woman of great wisdom."
"Yeah," I said, rolling on my side. "Come on, if you know, tell me."
Nativia looked confused. "Well, first you tell me. I mean what did La Dire say?"
"She said I would have to go on a journey, to kill whatever killed Friza."
"Friza?"
"Friza was different, too." I began to tell her the story. A minute into it, Easy burped, pounded his chest and complained about being hungry. He obviously didn't like the subject. Little Jon had to get up and when he wandered off into the bushes, Easy went after him, grunting, "Call me when it's finished. Dinner, I mean."
But Nativia listened closely and then asked some questions about Friza's death. When I told her about having to take a trip with Le Dorik, she nodded. "Well, it makes a lot more sense now."

"It does?"
She nodded again. "Hey, you guys, dinner's... ready?"
"Then can't you tell me...?"
She shook her head. "You wouldn't understand. I've done a lot more traveling than you. It's just that a lot of different people have died recently, like Friza died. Two down at Live Briar. And I've heard of three more in the past year. Something is going to have to be done. It might as well get started here." She pushed the cover off the pan again: more steam.
Easy and little Jon, who had been walking back up the stream, began to run.
"Elvis Presley!" Little Jon breathed. "Does that smell good! " He hunkered down by the fire, dribbling.
Easy's adenoids began to rattle. When a cat does it, it's purring.
I wanted to ask more, but I didn't want to annoy Easy and Little Jon; I guess I had acted bad with them, and they were pretty nice about it as long as I let it lie.
A frond full of ham, vegetables, and spiced fruit made me stop thinking about anything except what wasn't in my belly, and I learned that a good deal of my metaphysical melancholia was hunger. Always is.
More conversation, more food, more entertainment. We went to sleep right there by the stream, stretched on the ferns. Towards midnight when it got chilly we rolled into a pile. About an hour before dawn I woke.
I pulled my head from Easy's armpit (and Nativia's bald head moved immediately to take its place) and stood up in the star dark. Little Jon's head gleamed at my feet. So did my blade. He was using it for a pillow. I slipped it gently from under his cheek. He snorted, scratched himself, was still. I started back through the trees in the direction of the kage.
Once I looked up at the branches, at the wires that ran from the power-shack to the fence. The black lines overhead, or the sound of the stream, or memory took me. Halfway, I started playing. Someone began to whistle along with me. I stopped. The whistle didn't.

Where is he then? In a song?
Jean Genet/The Screens