"Nancy Kress - Maximum Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

him. And I don't know, can't even imagine, what will happen to me after that.
 2
NICK CLEMENTI
It's the same dream. I sit beside my mother by the duck pond, throwing our lunch to the ducks. "See, Nicky,
the babies swimming behind their mommies! If we were duckies, you'd swim right behind me and Jennifer
and Allen." "I want to swim in front of Jen'ver and Allen!" I say, and my mother laughs. She is very young
herself, and beautiful, sitting barefoot on the grass. The ducks fight over the bits of peanut-butter-and-jelly,
and quack and shrill and shriek and become my wrister.
I rolled over in bed and said, "Reception."
"A call, Dr. Clementi," said the MedCenter computer in its pleasant, androgynous voice. "Code Four.
Mrs. Paula Schaeffer. Complaints are tingling in left leg, lethargy, irritability. Instructions, please?"
"Schedule a visit in the morning," I said, probably as irritably as the would-be patient. If the computer
decided the call was a Code Four, it could wait. Tingling in the leg could be anything, was probably nothing.
Lethargy, irritabilityтАФMrs. Schaeffer always had those, as far as I could see. She was eighty-seven years
old, for God's sake, and it was two o'clock in the morning. Did she expect to be dancing a jig and planning a
party? But they were all afraid everything meant a stroke.
The wrister had woken Maggie. "Nick? Do you have to go out?"
"No. Just another Fretful Fossil." Our private name for themтАФeven though we ourselves were both in
our mid-seventies. Or maybe because. Joke about it, taste it, get used to it in small silly references to other
people, and it will be easier to live with. Mithridates, he died old.
Maggie rolled to nestle, spoon-fashion, against my back. Buttons on her nightdress poked into my skin.
"Your clothing is attacking me again."
"Sorry, love." She shifted position.
"Not good enough. Take it off."
"You're a dirty old man, Nick." And then, "Nick?"
It was going to be a good one, a hard one. I could feel it.
She was light and sweet in my arms. In her forties and fifties Maggie had gained weight, a hot exciting
cushion underneath me, but in her sixties and seventies it had all come off again, and I could feel her
delicate bones. And that fragranceтАФMaggie always had a fragrance to her, a unique odor, when she was
ready. She was ready now. Her thin arms tightened around me, and I slid in, and it was indeed one of the
good ones.
"Oh, nice, nice," Maggie said, as she had said for fifty-one years now.
"I love you, Maggie."
"Uhmmmmmmm . . . oh, yes, Nick, just like that."
She always knew what she wanted. For fifty-one years, I've been grateful it was me.
Afterward, the wrister rang again. Maggie dozed, one leg flung over mine, a stray white curl tickling my
nose. I must have slept, too; morning light filtered through the curtains. Maggie woke and shifted. "Damn it,
why can't they let you sleep? Don't answer it; it's probably just a tingling in Paula Schaeffer's other leg."
"Unlike what's tingling on you," I teased.
"Don't answer it, Nick."
"Reception," I said to the wrister.
"Probably a tingling in Paula Schaeffer's eyelashes."
But it wasn't. It was Jan Suleiman, clerk for the Committee, and a long time friend. Often Jan made
sure I heard things some people would prefer I not hear. I listened, and slowly sat up, staring into the
darkness across our bedroom.
"Nick?" Maggie said. "What is it?"
When the call was finished, I told her. I always told Maggie everything, even things I should not. She
was absolutely trustworthy. I told her about my remaining patients, about the economic struggles of the
Doctors for Humanity Volunteer MedCenter, about the political struggles at the Congressional Advisory
Committee for Medical Crises. There was only one thing I hadn't told her yet, and I would, when the time