"James Patrick Kelly - Burn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

Burn
James Patrick Kelly
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens
my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have
prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of
what wonder-ful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the
universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as
various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? тАФ
Walden

One

For the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men. тАФ Walden

Spur was in the nightmare again. It always began in the burn. The front of the burn took on a liquid
quality and oozed like lava toward him. It licked at boulders and scorched the trees in the forest he had
sworn to protect. There was nothing he could do to fight it; in the nightmare, he wasn't wearing his splash
pack. Or his fireproof field jacket. Fear pinned him against an oak until he could feel the skin on his face
start to cook. Then he tore himself away and ran. But now the burn leapt after him, following like a fiery
shadow. It chased him through a stand of pine; trees exploded like firecrackers. Sparks bit through his
civvies and stung him. He could smell burning hair. His hair. In a panic he dodged into a stream choked
with dead fish and poached frogs. But the water scalded his legs. He scrambled up the bank of the
stream, weeping. He knew he shouldn't be afraid; he was a veteran of the firefight. Still he felt as if
something was squeezing him. A whimpering gosdog bolted across his path, its feathers singed, eyes
wide. He could feel the burn dive under the forest and burrow ahead of him in every direction. The
ground was hot beneath his feet and the dark humus smoked and stank. In the nightmare there was just
one way out, but his brother-in-law Vic was blocking it. Only in the nightmare Vic was a pukpuk, one of
the human torches who had started the burn. Vic had not yet set himself on fire, although his baseball
jersey was smoking in the heat. He beckoned and for a moment Spur thought it might not be Vic after all
as the anguished face shimmered in the heat of the burn. Vic wouldn't betray them, would he? But by
then Spur had to dance to keep his shoes from catching fire, and he had no escape, no choice, no time.
The torch spread his arms wide and Spur stumbled into his embrace and with an angry whoosh they
exploded together into flame. Spur felt his skin crackle....

"That's enough for now." A sharp voice cut through the nightmare. Spur gasped with relief when he
realized that there was no burn. Not here anyway. He felt a cold hand brush against his forehead like a
blessing and knew that he was in the hospital. He had just been in the sim that the upsiders were using to
heal his soul.

"You've got to stop thrashing around like that," said the docbot. "Unless you want me to nail the leads to
your head."

Spur opened his eyes but all he could see was mist and shimmer. He tried to answer the docbot but he
could barely find his tongue in his own mouth. A brightness to his left gradually resolved into the sunny
window of the hospital room. Spur could feel the firm and not unpleasant pressure of the restraints, which
bound him to the bed: broad straps across his ankles, thighs, wrists and torso. The docbot peeled the
leads off his temples and then lifted Spur's head to get the one at the base of his skull.
"So do you remember your name?" it said.