"Nancy Kress - Saviour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Barbara muttered, "As if he knew the value of what he's guarding!"

"He knows," Cowell said. He didn't really want to talk to Barbara. Much as he loved
her, he really would have preferred to come to this place alone. Or with Sharon, if
Sharon had still been alive. But Barbara had been afraid he might have some sort of
final attack alone there by the object, and of course he might have. He was pretty
close to the end, and they both knew it. Getting here from Detroit was taking
everything Cowell had left.

He wheeled down the paved path. On either side, autumn stubble glinted with frost.
They were almost on the object before it materialized out of the fog.

Barbara began to babble. "Oh, it looks so different from pictures, even holos, so
much smaller but shinier, too, you never told me it was so shiny, Dad, I guess
whatever it's made of doesn't rust. But, no, of course the air isn't getting close
enough to rust it, is it, there's that shield to prevent oxidation, and they never found
out what that is composed of, either, did they, although I remember reading this
specu-lative article thatтАФ"

Cowell shut her out as best he could. He brought his chair close enough to touch the
shield. Still nothing: no tingle, no humming, no moving. Nothing at all.
That first time rushed back to him, in sharp sensory detail. The fatigue, the strain, the
rustle of corn husks in the unseen wind. Hans Kleinschmidt's Styrofoam cup of
coffee warm in Cowell's hand. Ann Pettie's cry It's landing here! Run! Cowell's
own strange personal feeling of inevitability: Of course. They wouldn't let me miss
this.

Well, they had. They'd let the whole world miss whatever the hell the object was
supposed to be, or do, or represent. Hans was long dead. Ann was institutionalized
with Alzheimer's. "Hello, ship." And the rest of his lifeтАФof many people's
livesтАФdevoted to trying to figure out the Space Super Fizzle.

That long frustration, Cowell thought, had showed him one thing, anyway. There
was no mystery behind the mystery, no unseen Plan, no alien messiah for humanity.
There was only this blank object sitting in a field, stared at by a shrill middle-aged
woman and a dying man. What you see is what you get. He, James Everett Cowell,
had been a fool to ever hope for anything else.

"Dad, why are you smiling like that? Don't, please!"

"It's nothing, Barbara."

"But you lookedтАФ"

"I said, 'It's nothing.'"

Suddenly he was very tired. It was cold out here, under the grey sky. Snow was in
the air.

"Honey, let's go back now."