"James Morrow - Auspicious Eggs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrow James)

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Auspicious Eggs
by James Morrow
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Copyright (c)2000 by James Morrow
First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 2000

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Science Fiction
Locus Poll Award Nominee

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Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan of Charlestown Parish, Connie to his
friends, sets down the styrofoam chalice, turns from the corrugated cardboard
altar, and approaches the two women standing by the resin baptismal font. The
font is six-sided and encrusted with saints, like a gigantic hex nut forged
for some obscure yet holy purpose, but its most impressive feature is its
portability. Hardly a month passes in which Connie doesn't drive the vessel
across town, bear it into some wretched hovel, and confer immortality on a
newborn whose parents have grown too feeble to leave home.
"Merribell, right?" asks Connie, pointing to the baby on his left.
Wedged in the crook of her mother's arm, the infant wriggles and howls.
"No -- Madelaine," Angela mumbles. Connie has known Angela Dunfey all her
life, and he still remembers the seraphic glow that beamed from her face when
she first received the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Today she boasts no such
glow. Her cheeks and brow appear tarnished, like iron corroded by the
Greenhouse Deluge, and her spine curls with a torsion more commonly seen in
women three times her age. "Merribell's over here." Angela raises her free
hand and gestures toward her cousin Lorna, who is balancing Madelaine's twin
sister atop her gravid belly. Will Lorna Dunfey, Connie wonders, also give
birth to twins? The phenomenon, he has heard, runs in families.
Touching the sleeve of Angela's frayed blue sweater, the priest
addresses her in a voice that travels clear across the nave. "Have these
children received the Sacrament of Reproductive Potential Assessment?"
The parishioner shifts a nugget of chewing gum from her left cheek to
her right. "Y-yes," she says at last.
Henry Shaw, the pale altar boy, his face abloom with acne, hands the
priest a parchment sheet stamped with the Seal of the Boston Isle Archdiocese.
A pair of signatures adorns the margin, verifying that two ecclesiastical
representatives have legitimized the birth. Connie instantly recognizes the