"Goonan, Kathleen Ann - The Day The Dam Broke" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goonan Kathleen Ann)

But then my heart is as well, to You, glowing and perhaps in an unborn wave, in
radio wave fibrillation. Yet I selfishly hope you don't doubt that I am really
here, let me tell you more, let me tell you how I bend in the brief spring and
yank fledgling weeds from among the soybean rows. Lettuce and peas grow well
here because it is so cool; I eat the lettuce before it gets to the house and
the peas which survive my greed for sweet green things dry on large screens. The
soybeans have furry green pods; I boil them whole then squeeze out the beans,
which are utterly delicious. Someone else built this cabin, not I; his name was
Peter Johnson and I often thank him. His virtual life is here though it does not
interest me much; still I do not wipe him but leave him compressed out of
respect. Sometimes he leaps from the walls to join Grandfather and we discuss
the deep structure of spacetime and forget that they are both dead as I stir the
soup and tend the fire. Perhaps they are not. Dead that is, for what is death?
You must tell me sometime if you think you know, for you will have been the same
place they are, more or less, except that I had the foresight to see that you
had a body when you woke. They do come in handy. Grandfather and Peter often
complain bitterly about being limited to this cabin.
Some summers have been far too cold, and I think I must leave my glorious
paradise and cease waiting here for You, but there have never been two bad
summers in a row and when I get depressed about the vegetables not growing I
travel to little Flin Flon, quite cautiously, and the most life I detect with
infrared are wild animals and not humans. I take what I need from the hotel's
inexhaustible freeze-dried stores in a cart pulled by Mildred. Are You
convinced? I am lonely, that is all. The rush of wind, which we never
experienced in the dome, which makes me feel so alive, is more than enough to
keep me here. This beauty is sharp. I ache to share it.
#
So. In Columbus the train door slid open and I was the only one debarking there,
the only one properly initialized, the other passengers braving on toward
Toronto, NYC, D.C. I stepped off the train.
After my first astonished gasp I reeled beneath the blue sky, I danced, I
laughed, then I rushed right across many empty tracks and here is concrete for
you, here is actual:
Mildred. I love my water buffalo and depend upon her, but not as much as I
depended upon my original Mildred, who hurried after me, laughing. Are You her?
I will talk about You as if you are not listening, because the odds are very
much against it. Someone else entirely might be listening, which is why I am a
bit cryptic. Or, and this is most likely, no one.
Mildred's hair was blonde and waist-long, fine as corn silk. That day it was
loose, and the wind caught it. Her eyes were wide, the curious shade of blue
which I saw that summer matched the delphiniums in her mother's garden. She said
she was Norwe gian, when I asked her, over coffee, in a small shop which disap
pointed with no mozzarella but which fulfilled my expectations with cappuccino,
which I still miss, the ceremony of it. Once in awhile I rummage through the
huge kitchen of the Pointed Fir Lodge to try and find a stovetop steamer, but
there is only a massive ornate machine in the dining room, electric.
Mildred did not like Don her husband very much, by that time, though she did not
quite realize it yet. It was he who prepared the wrong sheets for me, and it was
Mildred who helped me into them. But it rather backfired.
"Hello Dr. Chang," Don said, stumbling after me across the tracks. When he