"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Memory Dog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

your faceтАФreally, just a light caressтАФand then true newsтАФif you believe
the sourceтАФunfolds within you.

Arnold Wentworth was a smacker, one of the most well-known and
respected. The smacks were in the air, tangible things, like seeds adrift in
the wind, after we all knew that it was truthuseless on the airwaves. He
composed and sent smacks, and they were not the right smacks because
they too often told the truth. He was ElizabethтАЩs mentor, and her fury and
her wit brought him here. Many people believed Arnold WentworthтАФso
many that he was considered to be a threat to the government and tortured.
Millions of people worldwide took the Arnold Wentworth Pill, disseminated
on the black market. All based on the deepest trust, and Arnold, over the
years, had earned that trust.

Now only Elizabeth has ArnoldтАЩs smack code. Only she can release
his smacks.

I am a forbidden creatureтАФor at least I would be in Allover. My brain
is my entire body, every bit of it pressed into many functions at once, for I
am a memory dog, the only one of my kind. I am adrift in places and
thoughts that are not really here. Here is quickly baring branches, lake
marsh behind with ice creeping across its surface, low gray sky and gray
geese flying, honking, saying simply go, go, go, their amazing brains taken
up by getting there, by magnetism. Here is the pile of supplies Jake
deposited on the porch before driving away. Here is the strict chop of her
ax, her low muttered тАЬFuck them all!тАЭ which issues as rhythmically as the
downblow of the blade and its thunk into the block beneath the split log,
fuck them all, thunk, fuck them all, thunk, fuck them all. The pile of split
wood grows. The man watches from the window and I am thankful that I do
not have his memories too, for they are hideous.
 Here is free from feeling my own memories. Mostly.

I still know them, though. Knowing is a form of enormous selfishness.

I revel, for now, in knowing: Wendy. Jolly. Elizabeth.

And me: Mike. Sometimes I remember. My name is Mike.

****

Arnold may heal eventually. He cannot talk, not yet, but is beginning
to. He had a strokeтАФa specially administered stroke. Tears well constantly
and creep down his face and he cannot or does not bother to wipe them
away.

I nudge his resting hands with my long nose from time to time and his
hand sometimes stirs and rests on my head. I get little from him, but
whatever I get is becoming stronger. Perhaps he is recovering. From her, I
get electric anger, stabbing fury, the energy that still cannot be words. She
moves quickly, bringing in armfuls of split wood and clonking them onto the