"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Nanotech 04 - Light Music" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

take it all on faith. Nothing happened when I took it, and nothing
would happen soon, and nothing might ever happen.
Maybe thatтАЩs why so many folks did it.
I remember one Fourth of July when I was seven, which
happened to be on a Sunday, everybody in town squeezed into her
church-room and drank her communion stuff, maybe kind of as a
joke. Except that Gramma gets tears in her eyes when she talks
about it; it isnтАЩt a joke to her. She says that someday the whole
world and everything we know and are able to know will change
because of Reverend Dania and her band from Crescent City who
went on ahead while Dania stayed behind.
But she finally ran out of the stuff and said that she was too
worn out to go and make more. Maybe she stopped believing in it
herself.
Now she just lives right next door to us in her little white house
on Third Street, which is why I spend a lot of time with her. Mom
says to be nice to her, that she is a good person and maybe just a
little depressed because the world is taking so long to change.
Never mind that according to Gramma it has changed, and
changed, and changed again since she was a girl.
We have a bird zoo, an aviary, I guess you call it. In the aviary
there are all kinds of rare birds. Small brown sparrows and robins,
who have red chests. Some meanish black birds called grackles and
huger black birds called crows.
WeтАЩre only a block away from the aviary, and in the summer, in
the mornings, I like to lie in bed and listen to the singing of the
birds. Grandma says weтАЩre lucky to live so close. She says that
when sheтАЩs in bed with her eyes closed, it reminds her of when
there were birds everywhere, in all the trees. But something that
happened before I was born, the Silence, made them forget where
to go when they migrated, and millions and millions of them died.
They almost became extinct. A lot of other things are extinct too.
For a long time there was something called nan that changed
everything, but people like my grandparents stayed away from it,
back in this little mountain town, to stay safe. But someday I think
that I want to go out looking for nan and find out what it is.
Gramma told me a lot about how things used to be a long time ago,
when there was television and radio and a lot more people. SheтАЩs
real, real old, a hundred and fifty years old, I think. Dad says that
GrammaтАЩs stories are true, even though it all sounds very strange.
Dania says that someday everything will be like it used to be,
only a whole lot better. She says the birds will be able to migrate
again.
Anyway, we go to school in a big brick building a few blocks
away. Mom is a teacher in another classroom, and IтАЩm in the second
set, but at the top, and next year IтАЩll be the youngest in the third
set. Well, thatтАЩs hows come I know so much about birds. Mom
taught me.
Dania comes to our set once a week and teaches us songs. She
even goes around to the houses where there are babies and teaches