"Gordon R. Dickson - Time Storm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

manтАФa bookworm. But he was no use either to me or my' younger sister as a parent.
My mother was something else. To begin with, she was beautiful. Yes I know, every child thinks
that about its mother. But I had independent testimony from a number of other people; particularly
a long tine of men, other than my father, who not only thought so, also, but told my mother so,
when I was there to overhear them.
However, most of that came later. Before my sister was born my mother was my whole family, by
herself. We used to play games together, she and I. Also, she sang and talked to me and told me
stories endlessly. But then, after my sister was born, things began to change. Not at once, of
course. It was not until Beth was old enough to run around that the alteration in my mother became
clearly visible. I now mink that she had counted on Beth's birth to do something for her marriage;
and it had not done so.
At any rate, from that time on, she began to forget us. Not that I blamed her for it She had
forgotten our rather long sinceтАФin fact, there was nothing there to forget But now she began to
forget us as well. Not all of the time, to start with; but we came to know when she was about to
start forgetting because she would show up one day with some new, tall man we had never seen, who
smelted of cigars and alcohol.
When this first started happening, it was the beginning of ft bad time for me. I was too young
then to accept it and I wanted to fight whatever was taking her away from me; but there was
nothing there with which I could come to grips. It was only as if a glass window had suddenly been
rolled up between her and me; and no matter how I shouted or pounded on its transparent surface,
she did not hear. Still, I kept on trying to fight it for several years, during which she began to
stay away for longer and longer periodsтАФall with my father's sQent consent, or at least with no
objections from him.
It was at the dose of those years that my fight finally came to an end. I did not give up, because
I could not; but the time came when my mother disappeared completely. She went away on one last
trip and never came back. So at last I was able to stop struggling; and as a result I came to the
first great discovery of my life, which was that nobody ever really loved anyone. There was a
TIME STORM 23
vu3t-ln instinct when you were young that made yon mink you needed a mother; and another built-in
instinct in that mother to pay attention to you. But as you got older you discovered your parents
were only other humanly selfish people, in competition with you for fife's pleasures; and your
parents came to realize that this chfld of theirs that was you was not so unique and wonderful
after all, but only a small savage with whom they were burdened. When I understood this at last, I
began to see how knowing it gave me a great advantage over everyone else; because I realized then
that life was not love, as my mother had told me it was when I was very young, but competition
тАФfighting; and, knowing this, I was now set free to give aD my attention to what really mattered.
So, from that moment on I became a fighter without match, a fighter nothing could stop.
It was not quite that sudden and complete a change, of course. I still had, and probably always
would have, absent-minded moments when I would still react to other people out of my early
training, as if it mattered to me whether they lived or died. Indeed, after my mother disappeared
for good, there was a period of several years in which Beth clung to meтАФquite naturally, of
course, because I was all she hadтАФand I responded unthinkingly with the false affection reflex.
But in time she too grew up and went looking somewhere else for attention; and I became completely
free.
It was a freedom so great I saw most people could not even conceive of it When I was still less
than hatf-grown, adults would remark on how strong-minded I was. They talked of how I would make
my mark in die world. I used to want to laugh, hearing them say that, because .anything else was
unthinkable. I not only had every intention of leaving my mark on the world; I intended to put my
brand on it and turn it into my own personal property; and I had no doubt I could do it Free as I
was of the love delusion that blinkered all the rest of them, there was nothing to stop me; and I