"Nancy Kress - Phillipa's Hands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

shawl draped over a head, a hunched back. Then the swellings would shift before she could be sure.
Only the tears were constant, great rosy globes of sorrow welling and falling in arcs so beautiful that
Philippa had to look away. In the morning, when it was all over, the carpet would still be soaked clear
through.
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no no no no no no no no nowent the part of her that never understood, the most part, and her left hand
clutched at the edge of the quilt. The central blue vein sprung out sharply. on the back of her hand two
liver spots, for some reason clear in the gloom, echoed brown stains on the quilt that not even her diluted
bleach on a clean rag had been able to touch.

One of them stepped forward. This time it was the one on the left. Philippa never knew. Their hierarchy,
if they had one, was a mystery to her. If they were angels they should have a hierarchy, shouldn't they? It
was one of the reasons she had given up on the idea that they were angels.

Philippa let go the quilt and clasped her hands together to pray, but of course she couldn't do it. She
never could while they were in the room. It wasn't only that fear kept her from concentrating properly. It
was that she forgot what prayers were for, who they were addressed to, what the whole thing was
supposed to accomplish. There was no room in this for prayer, a thing which left the edges of hope intact
and a little fuzzy. You never really knew if prayers were answered or not. Here you always knew, in
concrete terms: this for that. It was a bargain, a contract, a hard Yankee deal.

She reached over to switch on the bedside lamp. The first time, she had actually thought that would them
vanish. Things that go bump in the night, begone the light. She hadn't known. She hadn't known anything.
She had burned with terror, smoked black at the edges with it, ignited with the fear that either she was
going or she wasn't. She hadn't known anything. And 416 people had died.

At the click of the lamp switch, the three glowing nebulous old women drew closer together. They
always did that. They also cried harder, the rosy tears silent welling, coursing a short way down the glow,
tremble minute like perfect-cut rubies come alive to breathe sorrow, breathe out pain. Then they fell.

Philippa waited.

The one who had stepped forwardтАФalthough now the light was on and they had moved into a bright an
huddle it was even more difficult to see where one left off and the next beganтАФreverently laid the clipping
on foot of the bed. Against the faded chintz of the quilt, inherited from Philippa's mother, the newsprint
looked almost white. The rosy huddle stepped back. Tears flowed.

тАЬWho are you?тАЭ Philippa said to the old women, but not because she expected an answer. Just for
something to say. In the still room her voice sounded rusty. Well, it was rusty. You don't speak when
there's nobody to speak to.

The second and third times, Philippa had torn apart the library in Carter Falls, looking for those
clippings. She had read every newspaper the library carried, and then the ones you had to use the
microfiche machine for, sticking her head into the strange contraption and trying to at least match the
typeface to the pieces of paper in her hand. She had even thought of driving into the college library in
Plattsburgh, but it had been hard enough to get into Jim's car for the first time in the eight months since the