"Memento Homo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

"Caid," Old Donegal breathed softly.
"What did you say, Donny?" Martha answered.
Old Donegal blinked hard and shook his head. Something let go with a soggy snap, and the misty man was gone. I'd better take it easy on the whiskey, he thought. You got to wait, Donegal, old lush, until Nora and Ken get here. You can't get drunk until they're gone, or you might get them mixed up with memories like Caid's.
Car doors slammed in the street below. Martha glanced toward the window.
"Think it's them? I wish they'd get here. I wish they'd hurry."
Martha arose and tiptoed to the window. She peered downtoward the sidewalk, put on a sharp frown. He heard a distant mutter of voices and occasional laughter, with group-footsteps milling about on the sidewalk. Martha murmured her disapproval and closed the window.
"Leave it open," he said.
"But the Keiths' guests are starting to come. There'll be such a racket." She looked at him hopefully, the way she did when she prompted his manners before company came.
Maybe it wasn't decent to listen in on a party when you were dying, he thought. But that wasn't the reason. Donegal, your chamber-pressure's dropping off. Your brains are in your butt-end, where a spacer's brains belong, but your butt-end died last month. She wants the window closed for her own sake, not yours.
"Leave it closed," he grunted. "But open it again before the moon-run blasts off. I want to listen."
She smiled and nodded, glancing at the clock. "It'll be an hour and a half yet. I'll watch the time."
"I hate that clock. I wish you'd throw it out. It's loud."
"It's your medicine-clock, Donny." " She came back to sit down at his bedside again. She sat in silence. The clock filled the room with its clicking pulse.
"What time are they coming?" he asked.
"Nora and Ken? They'll be here soon. Don't fret."
"Why should I fret?" He chuckled. "That boyЧhe'll be a good spacer, won't he, Martha?"
Martha said nothing, fanned at a fly that crawled across his pillow. The fly buzzed up in an angry spiral and alighted on the ceiling. Donegal watched it for a time. The fly had natural-born space-legs. I know your tricks, he told it with a smile, and I learned to walk on the bottomside of things be-fore you were a maggot. You stand there with your magna-soles hanging to the hull, and the rest of you's in free fall. You jerk a sole lose, and your knee flies up to your belly, and reaction spins you half-around and near throws your other hip out of joint if you don't jam the foot down fast and jerk up the other. It's worse'n trying to run through knee-deep mud with snow-shoes, and a man'll go nuts trying to keep his arms and legs from taking off in odd directions. I know your tricks, fly. But the fly was born with his magnasoles, and he trotted across the ceiling like Donegal never could.
"That boy KenЧhe ought to make a damn good space-engineer," wheezed the old man.
Her silence was long, and he rolled his head toward her
again. Her lips tight, she stared down at the palm of his hand, unfolded his bony fingers, felt the cracked calluses that still welted the shrunken skin, calluses worn there by the linings of space gauntlets and the handles of fuel valves, and the rungs of get-about ladders during free fall.
"I don't know if I should tell you," she said.
"Tell me what, Martha?"
She looked up slowly, scrutinizing his face. "Ken's changed his mind, Nora says. Ken doesn't like the academy. She says he wants to go to medical school."
Old Donegal thought it over, nodded absently. "That's fine. Space medics get good pay." He watched her carefully.
She lowered her eyes, rubbed at his calluses again. She shook her head slowly. "He doesn't want to go to space."
The clock clicked loudly in the closed room.
"I thought I ought to tell you, so you won't say anything to him about it," she added.
Old Donegal looked grayer than before. After a long silence, he rolled his head away and looked toward the limp curtains.
"Open the window, Martha," he said.
Her tongue clucked faintly as she started to protest, but she said nothing. After frozen seconds, she sighed and went to open it. The curtains billowed, and a babble of conversation blew in from the terrace of the Keith mansion. With the sound came the occasional brassy discord of a musician tuning his instrument. She clutched the window-sash as if she wished to slam it closed again.
"Well! Music!" grunted Old Donegal. "That's good. This is some shebang. Good whiskey and good music and you." He chuckled, but it choked off into a fit of coughing.
"Donny, about KenЧ"
"No matter, Martha," he said hastily. "Space-medic's pay is good."
"But DonnyЧ" She turned from the window, stared at him briefly, then said, "Sure, Donny, sure," and came back to sit down by his bed.
He smiled at her affectionately. She was a man's woman, was MarthaЧalways had been, still was. He had married her the year he had gone to space-a lissome, wistful, old-fashioned lass, with big violet eyes and gentle hands and gentle thoughtsЧand she had never complained about the long and lonely weeks between blast-off and glide-down, when most spacers' wives listened to the psychiatrists and soap-operas and soon developed the symptoms that were expected of them, either because the symptoms were chic, or because they felt they should do something to earn the pity that was extended to them. "It's not so bad," Martha had assured him. "The house keeps me busy till Nora's home from school, and then there's a flock of kids around till dinner. Nights are a little empty, but if there's a moon, I can always go out on the porch and look at it and know where you are. And Nora gets out the telescope you built her, and we make a game of it. `Seeing if Daddy's still at the office' she calls it."

"Those were the days," he muttered.
"What, Donny?"
"Do you remember that Steve Farrah song?"
She paused, frowning thoughtfully. There were a lot of Steve Farran songs, but after a moment she picked the right one, and sang it softly .. .
"0 moon whereo'er the clouds fly, Beyond the willow tree,
There is a ramblin' space guy I wish you'd save for me."
Mare Tranquilitatis,
O dark and tranquil sea,
Until he drops from heaven,
Rest him there with thee .. o'

Her voice cracked, and she laughed. Old Donegal chuckled weakly.
"Fried mush," he said. "That one made the cats wilt their ears and wail at the moon."
"I feel real crazy," he added. "Hand me. the king kong, fluff muff."