"Philip Jose Farmer - Mother" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

MOTHER
By
PHILIP JOSE FARMER


LOOK, mother. The clock is running backwards."
Eddie Fetts pointed to the hands on the pilot room dial, always set on Central Standard Time
because the majority of the research expedition thought it would remind them of their home state, Illinois,
whenever they looked at it. When staryachting, one time was as good as another.
Dr. Paula Fetts said, "The crash must have reversed it." "How could it do that?"
"I can't tell you. I don't know everything, son."
"Oh!'
"Well, don't look at me so disappointedly. I'm a pathologist, not an electronicist."
"Don't be so cross, mother. I can't stand it. Not now."
He walked out of the pilot room. Anxiously, she followed him. Burying the crew and her fellow
scientists had been very trying for him. Spilled blood had always made him dizzy and sick; he could
scarcely control his hands enough to help her sack the scattered bones and entrails. He had wanted to
put the corpses in the nuclear furnace, but she had forbidden that. The Geigers amidships were ticking
loudly, warning that there was an invisible death in the stern.
The meteor that struck the moment the ship came out of Translation into normal space had probably
wrecked the engine-room. So she had understood from the incoherent high-pitched phrases of a
colleague before he fled to the pilot room. She had hurried to find Eddie. She feared his cabin door
would still be locked, as he had been making a talk of the Heavy Hangs the Albatross aria from Gianelli's
Ancient Mariner.
Fortunately, the emergency system had automatically thrown out the locking circuits. Entering, she
had called out his name in fear he'd been hurt. He was lying half-unconscious on the floor, but it was not
the accident that had thrown him there. The reason lay in the corner, released from his lax band: a quart
free-fall thermos, rubber-nippled. From Eddie's open mouth charged a breath of rye that not even
chlorophyll pills had been able to conceal.
Sharply, she had commanded him to get up and onto the bed. Her voice, the first he had ever heard,
pierced through the phalanx of Old Red Star. He struggled up, and she though smaller, had thrown every
ounce of her weight into getting him up and onto the bed.
There she had lain down with him and strapped them both in. She understood that the lifeboat had
been wrecked also, and that it was up to the captain to bring the yacht down safely to the surface of this
chartered but unexplored planet, Baudelaire. Everybody else had gone to sit behind the captain, strapped
in their crashchairs, unable to help except with their silent backing.
Moral support had not been enough. The ship had come in on a shallow slant. Too fast, though. The
wounded motors had not been able to hold her up. The prow had taken the brunt of the punishment. So
had those seated in the nose.
Dr. Fetts had held her son's head on her bosom and prayed out loud to her God. Eddie had snored
and muttered. Then there was a sound like the clashing of the gates of doomтАФa tremendous bong as if
the ship were a clapper in a gargantuan bell tolling the most frightening message human .ears may hearтАФa
blinding blast of lightтАФand darkness and silence.
A few moments later Eddie began crying out in a childish voice, "Don't leave me to die, mother!
Come back! Come back!"
Mother was unconscious by his side, but he did not know that. He wept for a while, then he lapsed
back into his rye-fogged stuporтАФif he had ever been out of itтАФand slept. Again darkness and silence.

IT WAS the second day since the crash, if "day" could describe the twilight state on Baudelaire. Dr.
Fetts followed her son wherever he went. She knew he was very sensitive and easily upset. All his life