"12 - The Pusher by John Varley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Awards)

She shook her head solemnly. "My mother says not to take candy from strangers."
"But we're not strangers. I'm Ian, the pusher."
She thought that over. While she hesitated, he reached into the bag and picked out a chocolate thing so thick and gooey it was almost obscene. He bit into it, forcing himself to chew. He hated sweets.
"Okay," she said, and reached toward the bag. He pulled it away. She looked at him in innocent surprise.
"I just thought of something," he said. "I don't know your name. So I guess we are strangers."
She caught on to the game when she saw the twinkle in his eye. He'd practiced that. It was a good twinkle.
"My name is Radiant. Radiant Shining star Smith."
"A very fancy name," he said, thinking how names had changed. "For a very pretty girl." He paused, and cocked his head. "No. I don't think so. You're Radiant . . . Starr. With two r's. . . . Captain Radiant Starr, of the Star Patrol."
She was dubious for a moment. He wondered if he'd judged her wrong. Perhaps she was really Miz Radiant Fainting heart Belle, or Mrs. Radiant Motherhood. But her fingernails were a bit dirty for that.
She pointed a finger at him and made a Donald Duck sound as her thumb worked back and forth. He put his hand to his heart and fell over sideways, and she dissolved in laughter. She was careful, however, to keep her weapon firmly trained on him.
"And you'd better give me that candy or I'll shoot you again."

The playground was darker now, and not so crowded. She sat beside him on the bench, swinging her legs. Her bare feet did not quite touch the dirt.
She was going to be quite beautiful. He could see it clearly in her face. As for the body . . . who could tell?
Not that he really gave a damn.
She was dressed in a little of this and a little of that, worn here and there without much regard for his concepts of modesty. Many of the children wore nothing. It had been something of a shock when he arrived. Now he was almost used to it, but he still thought it incautious on the part of her parents. Did they really think the world was that safe, to let an eleven year-old girl go practically naked in a public place?
He sat there listening to her prattle about her friends-the ones she hated and the one or two she simply adored-with only part of his attention.
He inserted um's and uh-huh's in the right places.
She was cute, there was no denying it. She seemed as sweet as a child that age ever gets, which can be very sweet and as poisonous as a rattlesnake, almost at the same moment. She had the capacity to be warm, but it was on the surface. Underneath, she cared mostly about herself. Her loyalty would be a transitory thing, bestowed easily, just as easily forgotten.
And why not? She was young. It was perfectly healthy for her to be that way.
But did he dare try to touch her?
It was crazy. It was as insane as they all told him it was. It worked so seldom. Why would it work with her? He felt a weight of defeat.
"Are you okay?"
"Huh? Me? Oh, sure, I'm all right. Isn't your mother going to be worried about you?"
"I don't have to be in for hours, and hours yet." For a moment she looked so grown-up he almost believed the lie.
"Well, I'm getting tired of sitting here. And the candy's all gone." He looked at her face. Most of the chocolate had
ended up in a big circle around her mouth, except where she had wiped it daintily on her shoulder or forearm. "What's back there?"
She turned.
"That? That's the swimming hole."
"Why don't we go over there? I'll tell you a story."

The promise of a story was not enough to keep her out of the water. He didn't know if that was good or bad. He knew she was smart, a reader, and she had an imagination. But she was also active. That pull was too strong for him. He sat far from the water, under some bushes, and watched her swim with the three other children still in the park this late in the evening.
Maybe she would come back to him, and maybe she wouldn't. It wouldn't change his life either way, but it might change hers.
She emerged dripping and infinitely cleaner from the murky water. She dressed again in her random scraps, for whatever good it did her, and came to him, shivering.
"I'm cold," she said.
"Here." He took off his jacket. She looked at his hands as he wrapped it around her, and she reached out and touched the hardness of his shoulder.
"You sure must be strong," she commented.
"Pretty strong. I work hard, being a pusher."
"Just what is a pusher?" she said, and stifled a yawn.
"Come sit on my lap, and I'll tell you."

He did tell her, and it was a very good story that no adventurous child could resist. He had practiced that story, refined it, told it many times into a recorder until he had the rhythms and cadences just right, until he found just the right words not too difficult words, but words with some fire and juice in them.
And once more he grew encouraged. She had been tired when he started, but he gradually caught her attention. It was

possible no one had ever told her a story in quite that way. She was used to sitting before the screen and having a story shoved into her eyes and ears. It was something new to be able to interrupt with questions and get answers. Even reading was not like that. It was the oral tradition of storytelling, and it could still mesmerize the nth generation of the electronic age.
"That sounds great," she said, when she was sure he was .through.
"You liked it?"
"1 really truly did. 1 think I want to be a pusher when I grow up. That was a really neat story."
"Well, that's not actually the story I was going to tell you. That's just what it's like to be a pusher."
"You mean you have another story?"