"Ursula K. LeGuin - The New Atlantis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

shadows.

There were shadows, now.

We looked up, up from the flight of silver fish, up from the streets where the jade-green currents
flowed and the blue shadows fell. We moved and looked up, yearning, to the high towers of our
city. They stood, the fallen towers. They glowed in the ever-brightening radiance, not blue or
blue-green, up there, but gold. Far above them lay a vast, circular, trembling brightness: the sun's
light on the surface of the sea.

We are here. When we break through the bright circle into life, the water will break and stream
white down the white sides of the towers, and run down the steep streets back into the sea. The
water will glitter in dark hair, on the eyelids of dark eyes, and dry to a thin white film of salt.

We are here.

Whose voice? Who called to us?

***

He was with me for twelve days. On January 28, the 'crats came from the Bureau of Health, Education,
and Welfare and said that since he was receiving Unemployment Compensation while suffering from an
untreated illness, the government must look after him and restore him to health, because health is the
inalienable right of the citizens of a democracy. He refused to sign the consent forms, so the chief health
officer signed them. He refused to get up, so two of the policemen pulled him up off the bed. He started
to try to fight them. The chief health officer pulled his gun and said that if he continued to struggle he
would shoot him for resisting welfare, and arrest me for conspiracy to defraud the government. The man
who was holding my arms behind my back said they could always arrest me for unreported pregnancy
with intent to form a nuclear family. At that, Simon stopped trying to get free. It was really all he was
trying to do, not to right them, just to get his arms free. He looked at me, and they took him out.

He is in the Federal Hospital in Salem. I have not been able to find out whether he is in the regular
hospital or the mental wards.

It was on the radio again yesterday, about the rising land masses in the South Atlantic and the Western
Pacific. At Max's the other night I saw a TV special explaining about geophysical stresses and
subsidence and faults. The U.S. Geodetic Service is doing a lot of advertising around town; the most
common one is a big billboard that says IT'S NOT OUR FAULT! with a picture of a beaver pointing to
a schematic map that shows how even if Oregon has a major earthquake and subsidence as California
did last month, it will not affect Portland, or only the western suburbs perhaps. The news also said that
they plan to halt the tidal waves in Florida by dropping nuclear bombs where Miami was. Then they will
reattach Florida to the mainland with landfill. They are already advertising real estate for housing
developments on the landfill. The president is staying at the Mile High White House in Aspen, Colorado.
I don't think it will do him much good. Houseboats down on the Willamette are selling for $500,000.
There are no trains or buses running south from Portland, because all the highways were badly damaged
by the tremors and landslides last week, so I will have to see if I can get to Salem on foot. I still have the
rucksack I bought for the Mount Hood Wilderness Week. I got some dry lima beans and raisins with my
Federal Fair Share Super Value Green Stamp minimal ration book for FebruaryтАФit took the whole
bookтАФand Phil Drum made me a tiny camp stove powered with the solar cell. I didn't want to take the
Primus, it's too bulky, and I did want to be able to carry the viola. Max gave me a half pint of brandy.