"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Charlie retraced their course. It was somewhere between fifty and a hundred yards. Rivulets of sweat ran
down his ribs, and off his forehead into his eyes. He wiped them against JoeтАЩs shirt. Joe was sweaty too.
When he reached their stuff Charlie swung Joe around, down into his backpack. For once Joe did not
resist. тАЬSowy Da,тАЭ he said, and fell asleep as Charlie swung him onto his back.

Charlie took off walking. JoeтАЩs head rested against his neck, a sensation that had always pleased him
before. Sometimes the child would even suckle the tendon there. Now it was like the touch of some
meaning so great that he couldnтАЩt bear it, a huge cloudy aura of danger and love. He started to cry,
wiped his eyes and shook it off as if shaking away a nightmare. Hostages to fortune, he thought. You get
married, have kids, you give up such hostages to fortune. No avoiding it, no help for it. ItтАЩs just the price
you pay for such love. His son was a complete maniac and it only made him love him more.

He walked hard for most of an hour, through all the neighborhoods he had come to know so well in his
years of lonely Mr. Momhood. The vestiges of an older way of life lay under the trees like a network of
ley lines: rail beds, canal systems, Indian trails, even deer trails, all could be discerned. Charlie walked
them sightlessly. The ductile world drooped around him in the heat. Sweat lubricated his every move.

Slowly he regained his sense of normalcy. Just an ordinary day with Joe and Da.

The residential streets of Bethesda and Chevy Chase were in many ways quite beautiful. It had mostly to
do with the immense trees, and the grass underfoot. Green everywhere. On a weekday afternoon like
this, there was almost no one to be seen. The slight hilliness was just right for walking. Tall old
hardwoods gave some relief from the heat; above them the sky was an incandescent white. The trees
were undoubtedly second or even third growth, there couldnтАЩt be many old-growth hardwoods
anywhere east of the Mississippi. Still they were old trees, and tall. Charlie had never shifted out of his
California consciousness, in which open landscapes were the norm and the desire, so that on the one
hand he found the omnipresent forest claustrophobicтАФhe pined for a pineless viewтАФwhile on the other
hand it remained always exotic and compelling, even slightly ominous or spooky. The dapple of leaves at
every level, from the ground to the highest canopy, was a perpetual revelation to him; nothing in his home
ground or in his bookish sense of forests had prepared him for this vast and delicate venation of the air.
On the other hand he longed for a view of distant mountains as if for oxygen itself. On this day especially
he felt stifled and gasping.

His phone beeped again, and he pulled the earplug out of his pocket and stuck it in his ear, clicked the
set on.

тАЬHello.тАЭ

тАЬHey Charlie I donтАЩt want to bug you, but are you and Joe okay?тАЭ

тАЬOh yeah, thanks Roy. Thanks for checking back in, I forgot to call you.тАЭ

тАЬSo you found him.тАЭ

тАЬYeah I found him, but I had to stop him from running into traffic, and he was upset and I forgot to call
back.тАЭ

тАЬHey thatтАЩs okay. ItтАЩs just that I was wondering, you know, if you could finish off this draft with me.тАЭ

тАЬI guess.тАЭ Charlie sighed. тАЬTo tell the truth, Roy boy, IтАЩm not so sure how well this work-at-home thing