"Nancy Kress - Unto the Daughters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

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Unto the Daughters
by Nancy Kress
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Copyright (c)1995 Nancy Kress
First published in Sisters In Fantasy, Roc, 1995

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction and Fantasy


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THIS IS NOT THE WAY YOU HEARD THE STORY.
In the beginning, the tree was young. White blossoms scenting the air for a quarter mile. Shiny
succulent fruit, bending the same boughs that held blossoms. Leaves of that delicate yellow-green that
cannot, will not, last. Yet it did. He always did have gaudy taste. No restraint. Just look at the Himalayas.
Or blowfish. I mean really!
The woman was young, too. Pink curling toes, breasts as barely budded as the apple blossoms. And
the man! My dear, those long, firm flanks alone could make you ache inside for hours. He could run five
miles and not even be winded. He could make love to the woman five times a day. And did.
The flowers were young. The animals, tumbling and cavorting on the grass, were young. The fucking
beach sand was young, clean evenly shaped grains that only yesterday had been igneous rock. There was
virgin rain.
Only I was old.
But it wasn't that. That was the first thing that came to your mind, wasn't it? Jealousy of glorious
youth, revenge by the dried-up and jaded. Oh, you don't know, you sitting there so many centuries
ahead. It wasn't that at all. I mean, I loved them both.
Looking at them, how could one not?
****
"Go away," Eve says. "I'm not going to eat one."
She sits cross-legged, braiding flowers into a crown. The flowers are about what you'd expect from
Him, garish scarlet petals and a vulva shaped pistil like a bad joke. Braiding them, her fingers are deft and
competent. Some lion cubs tumble tiresomely on the grass.
"I want to give you a reason why you should eat one," I say, not gently.
"I've heard all your reasons."
"Not this one, Eve. This is a _new_ reason."
She isn't interested. She knots the crown of flowers, puts it on her head, giggles, tosses it at the lions.
It settles lopsided over one cub's left ear. The cub looks up with comic surprise, and Eve explodes into
laughter.
Really, sometimes I wonder why I bother. She's so stupid, compared to the man.
I bother because she's so stupid compared to the man.
"Listen, Eve. He withholds knowledge from you two because He's selfish. What else would you call