"Cory Doctorow - A Place So Foreign" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

hose through the door into 75 and into our apt's air-scrubber. Pa had shook his
head and smiled at her, and every Sunday, she dragged the exhaust pipe through
the door.

That night, Pa sat down and said grace, and he was in his shirtsleeves with his
suspenders down, and it almost felt like home -- almost felt like a million
Sunday dinners eaten by gaslight, with a sweaty pitcher of lemonade in the
middle of the table, and seasonal wildflowers, and a stinky cheroot for Pa
afterwards as he tipped his chair back and rested one hand on his belly, as if
he couldn't believe how much Mama had managed to stuff him this time.

"How are your studies coming, James?" he asked me, when the robutler had
finished clearing the plates and clattered away into its nook.

"Very well, sir. We're starting calculus now." Truth be told, I hated calculus,
hated Isaac Newton and asymptotes and the whole smelly business. Even with the
viral learning shots, it was like swimming in molasses for me.

"Calculus! Well, well, well --" this was one of Pa's catch-all phrases, like
"How _about_ that?" or "What do you know?" "Well, well, well. I can't believe
how much they stuff into kids' heads here."

"Yes, sir. There's an awful lot left to learn, yet." We did a subject every two
weeks. So far, I'd done French, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Physics and
Astrophysics, Esperanto, Cantonese and Mandarin, and an alien language whose
name translated as "Standard." I'd been exempted from History, of course, along
with the other kids there from the past -- the Chinese girl from the Ming
Dynasty, the Roman boy, and the Injun kid from South America.

Pa laughed around his cigar and crossed his legs. His shoes were so big, they
looked like canoes. "There surely is, son. There surely is. And how are you
doing with your classmates? Any tussles your teacher will want to talk to me
about?"

"No, sir! We're friendly as all get-out, even the girls." The kids in 75 didn't
even notice what they were doing in school. They just sat down at their
workstations and waited to have their brains filled with whatever was going on,
and left at three, and never complained about something being too hard or too
dull.

"That's good to hear, son. You've always been a good boy. Tell you what: you



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bring home a good report this Christmas, and I'll take you to see Saturn's rings
on vacation."