"Kevin O'Donnel Jr. - A usefull Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

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Useful Life
Copyright ┬й 1988 by Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.
First published in ANALOG, October 1989


The phone rang. Its RANDOM light glowed, so he said, "Friendly Ear."
"Good morning, Friendly Ear." Her cultured voice hinted at New England aristocracy---Smith
College, perhaps, and summers in Maine. Tennis whites bright enough to blind and dinner at the yacht
club.
"Good morning." Wheeling to the next cactus bench, which sagged beneath two dozen
containers of Opuntia microdasys---bunny ears, always a good seller---he scanned the rows of plants.
Cottony wisps clung to one round pad of a very nice specimen. He hoisted the six-inch clay pot and
tilted it to the diffused light streaming through the greenhouse panels overhead. Mealy bug. Damn.
"Ma'am? Can I help you?"
"Should I kill myself?"
"No." Ah, why did she have to ask so politely? Now she'd linger in memory like all the other
considerate ones, narrating his nightmares with unforgettable courtesy. He set the pot back on the bench.
"No, you shouldn't, ma'am."
"Why?" Undercurrents of stress and fear, but no hysteria, no panic. Nearly-normal intonation,
not the dead flatness of those so sunk in despair that only death offered hope. "What do you know
about me?"
"That you have an enchanting voice and a good education." After dipping a cotton swab in
rubbing alcohol, he leaned forward to dab it on the bugs. The alcohol would dehydrate them. "That
you're a woman of strong character, and that you're talking to me. That's all."
"Then how do you know I shouldn't?"
"Because it's irrevocable. Because if it's right, you can do it any time, but if it's wrong, you can't
ever take it back." He rotated the pot once. All gone. Good. He dropped the used swab into the
paper bag clipped to the side of his wheelchair. If only he could save people as easily. Or care as little
when he failed. "Life's better than death, honest. No matter how it may seem to you right now. God's
honest truth---things will get better."
"Why did you volunteer?"
He relaxed. Anyone actually curious about another human being still wanted to live, whether she
knew it yet or not. He could talk this one down. "Do you mean for Friendly Ear duty?"
"Yes. Are you one of those insufferably cheery and optimistic types the rest of us would like to
strangle?"
A smile came to his lips; he let it into his voice. "More than a few of my acquaintances would
enjoy strangling me, but it's doubtful that any of them would describe me as cheery and optimistic."
"Then why? I want to know. Please?"
Many of those who called just to talk asked that. He didn't mind answering, but he'd told the
story so often that he feared it had become merely that: a story, rather than an ordeal he had survived.
With each retelling, past pain and urgency grew more distant, more matter-of-fact. Someday he would
discover that the emotions had dried up and blown away; that day, he would resign from the Friendly
Ears. "Four years ago, the doctors told me they couldn't approve me for prosthetic legs after all,
because the shrapnel had paralyzed me from the hips down and they couldn't get anything working