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

minute at the dentist feels like an hour, and an hour with a pretty girl feels like a minute. Or something like
that. I could look it up, I guess, but the exact expression doesn't matter. All of us sometimes feel that
way.

The ship is quiet; but I knew it would be. Music just makes it seem emptier, so I make my rounds in
silence now, except when Evelyn speaks to me.
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My father got up and walked in a slow circle around the bench. He did that a lot; he couldn't sit for too
long in one place or his knees would stiffen. When he sat again, he said, "I was with Evelyn when your
mother died."

Why did it take you so long to tell me this, Dad? I wanted to say. Did you think I hadn't figured that out,
when you spent twenty-two hours out of every twenty-four in the womb with her, leaving me to bounce
around that great big goddamn tomb of a ship with nothing for company but VR spools of everything
we'd left behind? A huge space opened up inside me, as if his admission had broken through a wall into a
chamber of my memory that had been sealed up since I'd awakened cold and scared to see my father
with tears on his face and a terrible fear in his eyes. That fear got into me, and it's never left.
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Because I was so young, I didn't know why we were going to leave San Diego and go to the moon. It
was obvious to me that all the adults I knewтАФmy mom; her boss, Mr. Franklin; her brother, Herschel;
my teacher, Miss AlavesтАФwere nervous. It came out of them in different ways, according to their
ordinary personalities, but I remember knowing that something was up, and because nobody wanted to
explain it I was certain that it was something awful. Of course I had no way to ask; if I said What's
wrong?, they smiled and said Nothing. My only clue was something Uncle Herschel growled at the
wallscreen during the 2066 World Cup, when Nigeria scored a late goal to tie the US in the quarterfinals.
"I hope Big Mickey lands on fucking Lagos and fries every last one of you cheating bastards," he said.
It's one of my first memories.

After that I started to ask about Big Mickey. What was he? How could he fry the Nigerians? Did he
know they were cheaters? My mother sat me down and explained that outer space was full of big rocks,
and one of them might hit the Earth but probably wouldn't. How big, I wanted to know. Bigger than our
house? Bigger than an aircraft carrier? Bigger than the mountain where we'd gone camping?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I guess we better get out of the way, I said.

We're going to, my mother said, and brushed my hair back on my forehead. You and me, we're going
to.

And we did. On a hot spring day the next year, we took a plane out to the desert and got on a shuttle
bound for the moon. My mother cried, and looking back on it now I wish I'd said something to her, but I
was too keyed up for the trip. Going to the moon! To Armstrong Base!

And, more marvelous yet: going to see my father.
I hadn't seen him in so long that I only knew what he looked like because he was on the vid so much.
James Brennan, Volunteer. He and Patricia Walsh and Antonio Queiroz were going to save us. How
many of us? Everyone, my mother said. Don't worry, honey, we're all going to be gone by the time Big
Mickey gets here.
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