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

it to keep knowledge to yourself when you could just as well share it?"
 "I don't need knowledge," Eve says airily. "What do I need knowledge for? And anyway, that's not
a new reason. You've said that before."
"A tree, Eve. A fucking tree. To invest knowledge in. Doesn't that strike you as just a teeny bit
warped? Mathematics in xylem, morality in fruit pulp? Astronomy rotting on the ground every time an
apple falls. Don't you wonder what kind of a mind would do that?"
She only stares at me blankly. Oh, she's dumb. I mean!
I shout, in the temper of perfect despair, "Without knowledge, nothing will change!"
"Are you here again?" Adam says. I hadn't heard him climb over the rock behind us. He has a very
quiet footstep for someone whose toenails have never ever been cut. Also a quiet, penetrating voice. Eve
jumps up as if she's been shot.
"I thought I told you not to talk to this ... thing ever again," Adam says. 'Didn't I tell you that?"
Eve hangs her pretty head. "Yes, Adam. You did. I forgot."
He looks at her and his face softens. That blooming skin, those sweet lips. Her hair falls forward,
lustrous as night. I don't think my despair can go any deeper, but it does. She is so pretty. He will always
forgive her. And she will always forget everything he says two minutes after he says it.
"Be gone! You don't belong here!" Adam shouts, and throws a rock at me. It hits just behind my
head. It hurts like hell. One of the lion cubs happily fetches it back, wagging a golden tail. The other one
is still wearing the lopsided crown of flowers.
As I slither away, half blind with pain, Eve calls after me. "I don't want anything to change! I really
don't!"
The hell with her.
****
"Just listen," I say. "Just put your entire tiny mind on one thing for once and listen to me."
Eve sits sewing leaves into a blanket. Not cross-legged anymore: She is six months pregnant. The
leaves are wide and soft, with a sort of furry nap on their underside. They appeared in the garden right
after she got pregnant, along with tough spider webs that make splendid thread. Why not a bush that
grows little caps? Or tiny diapers with plastic fastening tabs? Really, He has such a banal imagination.
Eve hums as she sews. Beside her is the cradle Adam made. It's carved with moons and numbers
and stars and other cabalistic signs: a lovely piece of work. Adam has imagination.
"You have to listen, Eve. Not just hear -- listen. Stop that humming. I know the future -- how could
I know the future unless I am exactly what I say I am? I know everything that's going to happen. I told
you when you'd conceive, didn't I? That alone should have convinced you. And now I'm telling you that
your baby will be a boy, and you'll call him Cain, and he -- "
"No, I'm going to call him Silas," Eve says. She knots the end of her spider-thread and bites it off. "I
love the name Silas."
"You're going to call him Cain, and he -- "
"Do you think it would be prettier to embroider roses on this blanket, or daisies?"
"Eve, listen, if I can foretell the future then isn't it logical, isn't it reasonable for you to think -- "
"I don't have to think," Eve says. "Adam does that for both of us, plus all the forest-dressing and
fruit-tending. He works so hard, poor dear."
"Eve -- "
"Roses, I think. In blue."
I can't stand it anymore. I go out into the constant, perpetual, monotonous sunshine, which smells
like roses, like wisteria, like gardenia, like wood smoke, like new-mown hay. Like heaven.
****
Eve has the baby at nine months, thirty-two seconds. She laughs as the small head slides out, which takes
two painless minutes. The child is perfect.
"We'll call him Cain," Adam says.
"I thought we might call him Silas. I love the na -- "