"George Florance-Guthridge - The Quiet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Florance George)

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THE QUIET

George Florance-Guthridge

George Florance-Guthridge is the most western, most northern, and by all odds the coldest writer in this collection. He lives and teaches in Gambell, an Eskimo village on St. Lawrence Island, which is about fifty miles from Siberia. He says that this story (along with some forthcoming work that also combines anthropology with near future science fiction was one of the major catalysts for my interest in a teaching position in a remote location. "
The one time I met Guthridge, he was an English professor who had just published his first story, his name not yet hyphenated (the "Florance" in his byline is a tribute to his wife's role as live-in critic). He pursued the craft of English professorship for six or seven years, and then edited a science magazine from 1980 to 1981.
Guthridge has sold about four dozen stories in the past few years, as well as a truly oddball Western novel, The Blood letter, featuring the adventures of Joshua .44-40, a fifteen year-old retarded dwarf.

Kuara, my son, the Whites have stolen the moon.
Outside the window, the sky is black. A blue-white disc hangs among the stars. It is Earth, says Doctor Stefanko. I wail and beat my fists. Straps bind me to a bed. Doctor Stefanko forces my shoulders down, swabs my arm. "Since you can't keep still, I'm going to have to put you under again," she says, smiling. I lie quietly.
It is not Earth, Earth is brown. Earth is Kalahari.
"You are on the moon," Doctor Stefanko says. It is the second or third time she has told me; I have awakened and slept, awakened and slept, until I am not sure what voices are dream and what are real, if any. Something pricks my skin. "Rest now. You have had a long sleep."
I remember awakening the first time. The white room, white cloth covering me. Outside, blackness and the blue white disc.
"On the moon," I say. My limbs feel heavy. My head spins. Sleep drags at my flesh. "The moon."
"Isn't it wonderful?"
"And you say my husband, Tuka-dead."
Her lips tighten. She looks at me solemnly. "He did not survive the sleep."
"The moon is hollow," I tell her. "Everyone knows that. The dead sleep there." I stare at the ceiling. "I am alive and on the moon. Tuka is dead but is not here." The words seem to float from my mouth. There are little dots on the ceiling.
"Sleep now. That's a girl. We'll talk more later."
"And Kuara. My son. Alive." The dots are spinning. I close my eyes. The dots keep spinning.
"Yes, but . . .
The dots. The dots.

"About a hundred years ago a law was formulated to protect endangered species-animals that, unless humankind was careful, might become extinct," Doctor Stefanko says. Her
face, no longer blurry, seems underlain with shadow. She has dark gray hair, drawn cheeks. 1 have seen her somewhere long before I was brought to this place. I cannot remember where. The memory slips away. Dread haunts my heart.
Gai, wearing a breechcloth, stands grinning near the window. The disc Doctor Stefanko calls Earth haloes his head. His huge, pitted tongue sticks out where his front teeth are missing. His shoulders slope like those of a hartebeest. His chest, leathery and wrinkled, is tufted with hair beginning to gray. 1 am not surprised to see him, after his treachery. He makes num-power pulse in the pit of my belly. 1 look away.
"Then the law was broadened to include endangered peoples. Peoples like the Gwi." Managing to smile. Doctor Stefanko presses her index finger against my nose. I toss my head, 1 don't trust her. She frowns. "Obviously it would be impossible to save entire tribes. So the founders of the law did what they thought best. They saved certain representatives. You. Your family. A few others, such as Gai. These representatives were frozen."
"Frozen?"
"Made cold."
"As during gum,' when ice forms inside the ostrich-egg containers?"
"Much colder."
It was not dream, then. I remember staring through a blue, crinkled sheen. Like light seen through a snakeskin. I could not move, though my insides never stopped shivering. So this is death, 1 kept thinking.
"In the interim you were brought here to the moon. To Carnival. It is a fine place. A truly international facility. built as a testament to the harmony of nations. Here we have tried to recreate the best of what used to be." She pauses, and her eyes grow keen. "This will be your new home now. U."
"And Kuara?"
"He will live here with you, in time." Something in her voice makes fear touch me. Then she says, "Would you like to see him?" Some of the fear slides away.

"Is it wise, Doctor?" Gai asks. "She has a temper, this one." His eyes grin down at me. He stares at my pelvis.
"Oh, we'll manage. You'll be a good girl, won't you, U?"
My head nods. My heart does not say yes or no.
The straps leap away with a loud click. Doctor Stefanko and Gai help me to my feet. The world wobbles. The Earth disc tilts and swings. The floor slants one way, another way. Needles tingle in my feet and hands. I am helped into a chair. More clicking. The door hisses open and the chair floats out, Doctor Stefanko leading, Gai lumbering behind. We move down one corridor after another. This is a place of angles. No curves, except the smiles of Whites as we pass. And they curve too much.
Another door hisses. We enter a room full of chill. Blue glass, the inside laced with frost, stretches from floor to ceiling along each wall. Frozen figures stand behind the glass. I remember this place. 1 remember how sluggish was the hate in my heart.
"Kuara is on the end," Doctor Stefanko says, her breath white.
The chair floats closer. My legs bump the glass; cold shocks my knees. The chair draws back. I lean forward. Through the glass I can see the closed eyes of my son. Ice furs his lashes and brows. His head is tilted to one side. His little arms dangle. I touch the glass in spite of the cold. 1 hear Gai's sharp intake of breath and he draws back my shoulders, but Doctor Stefanko puts a hand on Gai's wrist and I am released. There is give to the glass. Not like that on the trucks in the tsama patch. My num rises. My heart beats faster. Num enters my arms, floods my fingers. "Kuara," I whisper. Warmth spreads upon the glass. It makes a small, ragged circle.
"He'll be taken from here as soon as you've demonstrated you can adjust to your new home," Doctor Stefanko says.
Kuara. If only I could dance. Num would boil within me. I could kia. I would shoo away the ghosts of the cold. Awakening, you would step through the glass and into my arms.
Though we often lacked water, we were not unhappy. The tsama melons supported us. It was a large patch, and by conserving we could last long periods without journeying to the waterholes. Whites and tame Bushmen had taken over the Gam and Gautscha Pans, and the people there, the Kung, either had run away or had stayed for the water and now worked the Whites' farms and ate mealie meal.
There were eleven of us, though sometimes one or two more. Gai, unmated, was one of those who came and went. Tuka would say, "You can always count us on three hands, but never on two or four hands." He would laugh, then. He was always laughing. I think he laughed because there was so little game near the Akam Pan, our home. The few duiker and steenbok that had once roamed our plain had smelled the coming of the Whites and the fleeing Kung, and had run away. Tuka laughed to fill up the empty spaces.