"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Nanotech 02- Mississippi Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

тАФPage 34, Out of Control , Kelly


Mississippi Blues



Prologue
Blaze

My name is Blaze. I am walking by the riverfront in Cincinnati.
Cincinnati after the Third Nanotech Wave. I have to keep telling
myself because I forget. There is something wrong with me. This is
because I was dead, I guess.
It is twilight: chilly, with a slight mist rising from the dark river.
It blurs the lights that flicker festively now and then from
RoeblingтАЩs ruined bridge, which extends bravely into the wild,
earthquake-spawned confluence of the new and old Ohio Rivers. I
know these things, can clap words to these qualities, and it is good
for it means that language is returning. It is frightening for the
connections between what you experience and the words, so
infinitely rich, to vanish. The bottom falls out of the world.
A jostling, rowdy crowd fills the riverfront. They dance to no
music I can focus on; it is all just bits and pieces of shouted song,
arising seemingly at random from the melee, each fragment
conflicting with a thousand others in the general roar. There is so
much noise itтАЩs hard to think. But I have to keep going over what
happened. Each time I remember a little more.
These are the main things: I was shot in the chest by John, my
Shaker Brother, at Shaker Hill just outside deserted Dayton where
we lived secluded from nan, near the little empty town of
Miamisburg. I donтАЩt remember being shot, but thatтАЩs what Verity
tells me. Verity killed John by throwing her radio stone at his head
before he could shoot anyone else. She always had a good strong
pitch. Maybe this is partly what is making me so sick: it seems as if
everything went crazy and I donтАЩt remember it.
Maybe I should feel like celebrating because of my resurrection
but I donтАЩt. For a while I did, when I went into a bar with Sphere
and played the piano while he played the saxophone. Then I was
ecstaticтАФalmost, truly, out of my body and out of my mind with
joy. The language of music is lodged deep within me, and happily
has not been lost. It is my core and always has been. But I canтАЩt
find Sphere right now. My eyes are playing tricks on me anyway.
Sometimes all I can see are brilliant, moving splashes of color that I
canтАЩt visually parse, so I might not recognize him anyway.
I look uphill into the City, which flashes like lightning as parts of
it reactivate briefly. The buildings, from historically varying times,
stand row on row like silent stones in a spectacularly huge and
strange graveyard; then suddenly a vast splash of light illuminates
a Tulip or a Rose on top of a buildingтАФterrifying, for these Flowers