"Will McCarthy - Bloom" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

Momma, Momma. I couldn't stop saying the word, though I never heard my own name in return
anymore. Perhaps a need to remind her that I, too, was a part of her memories. Or maybe I was
reminding myself, or maybe it's a lot more complex than that, or a lot simpler. Love is a twisted thing, not
for us to decipher. She was my mother.

"I'm listening," she said, the smile falling away. "You're going on a trip, all right. People go on trips
sometimes; it's nothing to get bent up about. Is it a long trip? Far away?"

I nodded. "Yes, a long one. Almost a year."

"Ah-hah." She paused, looked down. "I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I won'tтАж I think I'm sick,
you know. I think there's definitely something wrong with me. Maybe it's my memory, it does seem to
play tricks, but that's not quite the same thing as feeling ill, if you know what I mean. Do you think I'll still
be here when you get back? A year from now, well, that's a long time to the elderly."

"Of course you will," I said, too quickly. And compounded the error by patting her hand again.

And I knew then that Momma wasn't altogether gone, because she looked up sharply, snatching away
her hand. "Don't you talk down to me, young fellow. I won't be talked down to like that, condescended
to, you hear me? And take those damn glasses off. You look just exactly like a fool."




That night, I pored over Lottick's files for nearly an hour, long enough to put together a more detailed
mission description and flash it to my net channels to feed the curiosity there. Lottick's blatant flattery
aside, I was not the only commentator or historian in the Immunity. Far from it. I can think of nine serious
ones right off the top of my head (and you all know who you are), another twenty or thirty dabblers, and
of course the thousands of contributors to the unmoderated channels.

VR mail had been trickling in for me all day, messages of congratulation and commiseration and frank
curiosity. I answered several of these at length, answered more with a form letter. There were some
jealous inquiries as well. Why me, they wondered aloud? Why not someone else, someone perhaps with
a more rugged or more technical background? One of these, though biting, was actually very funny, so I
archived it and made a note to get in touch with its author, when I'd had time to build up the necessary
reserve of wit.

And then, as every evening, I read my net channels, perused city records, made a few discreet realtime
calls, and flashed the comm network with info and opinion nuggetsтАФthe worlds according to John
Strasheim.

"тАж fourteen deaths last week, and only nine births, which is consistent with annual statistics. and
yet, two-thirds of Immunity citizens remain unmarried, and more than half of those claim to be
seeking romantic alliances without success. No surprise that the 'Boff a Stranger' holiday proposal
was shot down in council, but if we hope to stave off a slow extinction we had better find a way to
get our men and women together outside of working hours. Or maybe we all just need to lower
our standards a bitтАж"

"тАж yet another warehouse robbery, this time for eight thousand g.u. in bismuth bar stock. How
the perpetrators managed to carry it all away unnoticed is a mystery to this berichter, but sources