"Ian R. MacLeod - Papa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

Bill decided that I wasnтАЩt up to maintaining it any longer and bought me a mec-cultivator, I really only
wander out here at night. IтАЩve always been a raggedy kind of gardener, and this place is now far too neat
for me. You could putt on the neat little lawns, and the borders are a lesson in geometry. So I generally
make do with darkness, the secret touch of the leaves, the scents of hidden blooms. I havenтАЩt seen the
mec-cultivator for several days now anyway, although itтАЩs obviously still keeping busy, trundling along
with its silver arms and prettily painted panels, searching endlessly for weeds, collecting seedheads,
snipping at stray fingers of ivy. We avoid each other, it and I. In its prim determinationтАФeven in the
flower displays that it delivers to the house when IтАЩm not lookingтАФit reminds me of Bill. He tries so hard,
does Bill. HeтАЩs a worrier in an age when people have given up worrying. And heтАЩs a carer, too. I know
that. And I love my son. I truly love him. I just wish that Hannah was alive to love him with me. I wish
that she was walking the streets of the port, buying dresses from the stalls down by the harbor. I just wish
that things were a little different.
I sit down on the wall. ItтАЩs hard to remember for sure now whether things were ever that happy for
me. I must go back to times late in the last century when I was with Hannah, and everything was so much
less easy then. We all thought the world was ending, for a start. Everything we did had a kind of twilit
intensity. Of course, I was lucky; I worked in engineering constructionтАФall those Newtonian equations
that are now routinely demolishedтАФat a time when rivers were being diverted, flood barriers erected,
seas tamed. I had money and I had opportunity. But if you spend your life thinking Lucky, Lucky, Lucky,
youтАЩre really simply waiting for a fall. I remember the agonies Hannah and I went through before we
decided to have Bill. We talked on and on about the wars, the heat, the continents of skeleton bodies.
But we finally decided as parents always do that love and hope is enough. And we made love as though
we meant it, and Bill was born, and the moneyтАФat least for usтАФkept on coming in through the endless
recessions. There were even inklings of the ways that things would get better. I remember TV programs
where academics tried to describe the golden horizons that lay aheadтАФhow unraveling the edges of
possibility and time promised predictive intelligence, unlimited energy. Hannah and I were better
equipped than most to understand, but we were still puzzled, confused. And we knew enough about
history to recognize the parallels between all this quantum magic and the fiasco of nuclear power, which
must once have seemed equally promising, and equally incomprehensible.
But this time the physicists had got it largely right. Bill must have been ten by the time the good news
began to outweigh the bad, and he was still drawing pictures of burnt-out rainforest, although by then he
was using a paintbox PC to do it. I remember that I was a little amazed at his steady aura of gloom. But I
thought that perhaps he just needed time to change and adjust to a world that was undeniably getting
better, and perhaps he would have done so, become like Saul and AgathaтАФa child of the bright new
ageтАФif Hannah hadnтАЩt died.
I totter back through the garden, across the patio and into the house. Feeling like a voyeur, I peek
into Saul and AgathaтАЩs bedroom. TheyтАЩve been hereтАФwhat?тАФless than a day, and already it looks
deeply lived in, and smells like a gym. Odd socks and bedsheets and tissues are strewn across the floor,
along with food wrappers (does that mean IтАЩm not feeding them enough?), shoes, the torn pages of the
in-flight shuttle magazine, the softly glowing sheet of whatever book AgathaтАЩs reading. I gaze at it, but of
course itтАЩs not a book, but another game; AgathaтАЩs probably never read a book in her life. Whatever the
thing is, I feel giddy just looking at it. Like falling down a prismatic well.
Putting the thing down again exactly where I found it, I notice that theyтАЩve broken the top off the vase
on the dresser, and then pushed the shards back into place. ItтАЩs a thing that Hannah bought from one of
those shops that used to sell Third World goods at First World prices; when there was a Third and First
World. Thick blue glaze, decorated with unlikely looking birds. I used to hate that vase, until Hannah
died, and then the things we squabbled over became achingly sweet. Saul and AgathaтАЩll probably tell me
about breaking it when they find the right moment. Or perhaps they think PapaтАЩll never notice. But I
donтАЩt mind. I really donтАЩt care. Saul and Agatha can break anything they want, smash up this whole
fucking house. I almost wish they would, in fact, or at least leave some lasting impression. This place is
filled with the stuff of a lifetime, but now it seems empty. How I envy my grandchildren this dreadfully