"Kim Stanley Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

wonks all day, and get home late every nightтАФor he could spend that day with Joe
wandering the parks and bookstores of Bethesda, calling in to PhilтАЩs office from
time to time to have those same policy talks in mercifully truncated form, he knew
very well which day he preferred. It was an easy call, a no-brainer. He liked spending
time with Joe. With all its problems and crises, he enjoyed it more than almost
anything he had ever done. And Joe was growing up fast, and Charlie could see that
what he enjoyed most in their life together was only going to last until preschool, if
then. It went by fast!



Indeed, in the last week or so it seemed that Joe was changing so fast that CharlieтАЩs
desire to spend time with him was becoming as much a result of worry as of desire
for pleasure. It seemed he was dealing with a different kid. But Charlie suppressed
this feeling, and tried to pretend to himself that it was only for positive reasons that
he wanted to stay home.
Only occasionally, and for short periods, could he think honestly about this to
himself. Nothing about the matter was obvious, even when he did try to think about
it. Because ever since their trip to Khembalung, Joe had been a little
differentтАФfeverish, Anna claimed, although only her closest ovulation-monitoring
thermometer could find this feverтАФbut in any case hectic, and irritable in a way that
was unlike his earlier irritability, which had seemed to Charlie a kind of cosmic
energy, a force chafing at its restraints. After Khembalung it had turned peevish, even
pained.
All this had coincided with what Charlie regarded as undue interest in Joe on the part
of the Khembalis, and Charlie had gotten Drepung to admit that the Khembalis
thought that Joe was one of their great lamas, reincarnated in JoeтАЩs body. ThatтАЩs
how it happened, to their way of thinking.
After that news, and also at CharlieтАЩs insistence, they had performed a kind of
exorcism ritual (they had not put it like that) designed to drive any reincarnated soul
out of Joe, leaving the original inhabitant, which was the only one Charlie wanted in
there. But now he was beginning to wonder if all that had been a good idea. Maybe,
he was beginning to think, his original Joe had in fact been the very personality that
the Khembalis had driven out.
Not that Joe was all that different. Anna declared his fever was gone, and he was
therefore more relaxed, and that his moodiness was much as before.
Only to Charlie he was clearly different, in ways he found hard to characterize to
himselfтАФbut chiefly, the boy was now too content with things as they were. His Joe
had never been like that, not since the very moment of his birth, which from all
appearances had angered him greatly. Charlie could still remember seeing his little
red face just out of Anna, royally pissed off and yelling.
But none of that now. No tantrums, no imperious commands. He was calm, he was
biddable; he was even inclined to take naps. It just wasnтАЩt his Joe.
Given these new impressions, Charlie was not in the slightest inclined to want to put
Joe in a new situation, thus confusing the issue even further. He wanted to hang out
with him, see what he was doing and feeling; he wanted to study him. This was what
parental love came down to, apparently, sometimes, especially with a toddler, a
human being in one of the most transient and astonishing of all the life stages.
Someone coming to consciousness!
But the world was no respecter of CharlieтАЩs feelings. Later that morning his cell