"Alex Irvine - Volunteers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Irvine Alexander C)

the movie screen. The Lodge took to meeting during this same period, rotating who attended so nobody
drew suspicion for missing too many movies. I didn't make many Lodge meetings, because I wasn't
supposed to be obvious, but that was okay, because I was a plain sucker for movies. Iris liked them too.
We sat there watching Fifties B-movies about alien invasions, holding hands and liking the way the old
stories made us feel brave and a little superiorтАФbecause we knew what other worlds were like, and we
still knew we were on another world.

The day after I talked to my dad about Schimmel, I went looking for Iris at movie time. We sat through
Track of the Moon Beast and then took a walk together. Iris remembered more of Earth than I did.
She'd been five when we left, so we were the same age now, but she'd had two extra years to soak up
Earth memories.

"Do you remember getting on the ship?" I asked her. We were walking toward the river, and it took a
conscious effort not to veer toward the cemetery.

Iris nodded. "There was a big umbilical between the ship and Lagrange Five. In the station you could
look out a window at the ship, and my dad tried to hold me up to see it but lifted me too hard and kind of
bounced me off the ceiling. So I boarded Susan Constant with a bump on my head."

"There was no gravity, right?" Of course there was no gravity. I just wanted Iris to validate my memory
of my mother.

"Come on, Wiley. You know there wasn't. I had fun in the umbilical, bouncing around. My parents tried
to do what I was doing and ended up accidentally kicking each other. After that they were strictly
handhold-to-handhold. I think half of the people on the ship had bruises when they went into the berths."
She was smiling at the memory. One of her front teeth was a little crooked. I liked it.

We reached the river and stood looking down into the black water. There was no wind, and the shallows
were still enough that stars reflected on the surface. "I used to think that Evelyn killed my mother," I said.

"Oh," Iris said, with a sharp little inhalation.

"I don't any more."

She hesitated. "That's good."

I felt for her hand in the dark, found it and some thigh, too. She twined her fingers in mine. "Maybe it's
better that you don't remember Earth," she began, but I cut her off.

"No, I do."

"Wiley," she said. "Maybe it's better that you don't. You're much more a, what, Canaanite than an тАж"
She searched for a word, didn't like the one she found.

"Earthling?" I suggested, and we both broke up laughing.
├Дt
In year elevenтАФthis would make me sixteenтАФMilt Bahrani showed up at one of the meetings. "Hey,
Milt," Furcal said. "What's the good word?"

"What are you guys doing here?" Milt said. He smiled at Furcal's use of his name, but it was the kind of