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

left in the United States, but the trees didn't look at all the way they do in the postcards and brochures
and Federal Beautification Bureau advertisements. They were spindly, and they all had little signs on
saying which union they had been planted by. There were actually a lot more green picnic tables and
cement Men's and Women's than there were trees. There was an electrified fence all around the forest to
keep out unauthorized persons. The forest ranger talked about mountain jays, "bold little robbers," he
said, "who will come and snatch the sandwich from your very hand," but I didn't see any. Perhaps
because that was the weekly Watch Those Surplus Calories! Day for all the women, and so we didn't
have any sandwiches. If I'd seen a mountain jay, I might have snatched the sandwich from his very hand,
who knows. Anyhow it was an exhausting week, and I wished I'd stayed home and practiced, even
though I'd have lost a week's pay because staying home and practicing the viola doesn't count as planned
implementation of recreational leisure as defined by the Federal Union of Unions.

When I came back from my Antarctican expedition, the man was reading again, and I got a look at his
pamphlet; and that was the odd part of it. The pamphlet was called "Increasing Efficiency in Public
Accountant Training Schools," and I could see from the one paragraph I got a glance at that there was
nothing about new continents emerging from the ocean depths in itтАФnothing at all.

Then we had to get out and walk on into Gresham, because they had decided that the best thing for us all
to do was get onto the Greater Portland Area Rapid Public Transit Lines, since there had been so many
breakdowns that the charter bus company didn't have any more buses to send out to pick us up. The
walk was wet, and rather dull, except when we passed the Cold Mountain Commune. They have a wall
around it to keep out unauthorized persons, and a big neon sign out front saying COLD MOUNTAIN
COMMUNE, and there were some people in authentic jeans and ponchos by the highway selling
macrame belts and sandcast candles and soybean bread to the tourists. In Gresham, I took the 4:40
GPARPTL Superjet Flyer train to Burnside and East 230th, and then walked to 217th and got the bus to
the Goldschmidt Overpass, and transferred to the shuttlebus, but it had boiler trouble, so I didn't reach
the downtown transfer point until ten after eight, and the buses go on a once-an-hour schedule at eight,
so I got a meatless hamburger at the Longhorn Inch-Thick Steak House Dinerette and caught the nine
o'clock bus and got home about ten. When I let myself into the apartment I flipped the switch to turn on
the lights, but there still weren't any. There had been a power outage in West Portland for three weeks.
So I went feeling about for the candles in the dark, and it was a minute or so before I noticed that
somebody was lying on my bed.

I panicked, and tried to turn the lights on.

It was a man, lying there in a long thin heap. I thought a burglar had got in somehow while I was away
and died. I opened the door so I could get out quick or at least my yells could be heard, and then I
managed not to shake long enough to strike a match, and lighted the candle, and came a little closer to
the bed.

The light disturbed him. He made a sort of snorting in his throat and turned his head. I saw it was a
stranger, but I knew his eyebrows, then the breadth of his closed eyelids, then I saw my husband.

He woke up while I was standing there over him with the candle in my hand. He laughed and said, still
half asleep, "Ah, Psyche! From the regions which are holy land."

Neither of us made much fuss. It was unexpected, but it did seem so natural for him to be there, after all,
much more natural than for him not to be there, and he was too tired to be very emotional. We lay there
together in the dark, and he explained that they had released him from the Rehabilitation Camp early
because he had injured his back in an accident in the gravel quarry, and they were afraid it might get