"Samuel R. Delany - Nova" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

Provechi."

Dan's face twisted. "Your name is ... What did you say? It's shaking my head apart. There's a
choir crouched in my ears, shouting down into my skull twenty-six hours a day. The nerve ends,
they're sending out static, the death rattle that sun's been dying ever since. Over that, I can
just hear your voice, like an echo of something shouted a hundred yards off." Dan coughed and sat
back, hard. "Where are you from?" He wiped his mouth.

"Here in Draco," the Mouse said. "Earth."

"Earth? Where? America? You come from a little white house on a tree-lined street, with a
bicycle in the garage?"

Oh yes, the Mouse thought. Blind, and deaf too. The Mouse's speech was good, but he'd never even
tried to correct his accent.

"Me. I'm from Australia. From a white house. I lived just outside Melbourne. Trees. I had a
bicycle. But that was a long time ago. A long time, wasn't it, boy? You know Australia, on
Earth?"

"Been through." The Mouse squirmed in his chair and wondered how to get away.

"Yes. That's how it was. But you don't know, boy! You can't know what it's like to stagger
through the rest of your life with a nova dug into your brain, remembering Melbourne, remembering
the bicycle. What did you say your name was?"

The Mouse looked left at the window, right at the door.

"I can't remember it. The sound of that sun blots out everything."

The mechanics, who had been listening till now, turned to the bar.

"Can't remember a thing any more!"

At another table a black-haired woman fell back to her card game with her blond companion.



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"Oh, I've been sent to doctors! They say if they cut out the nerves, optic and aural, slice them
off at the brain, the roaring, the light -- it might stop! Might?" He raised his hands to his
face. "And the shadows of the world that come in, they'd stop too. Your name? What's your
name?"

The Mouse got the words ready in his mouth, along with, excuse me, huh? I gotta go.

But Dan coughed, clutched at his ears.