"Spider Robinson - Too Soon We Grow Old" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

know you can endure."
She examined her fingertips. "Perhaps you're right," she said at last. "Good day,
Mr. Hold."
"Good-bye, Diana."
He collapsed the camera and left, looking rather smug.
A long time later, seated on a couch which had cost the equivalent of her father's
total worth at the time of his death, she said to the empty air, "тАж but I never have
been a quitter."
And after the sun had come up, she called her local Cold Sleep center, made an
appointment to speak with its director, and then called her attorney.

The second awakening was much better, and she did not enjoy it nearly as much.
Objectively, she should have. She no longer hurt anywhere that she could detect,
and the bedтАФshe corrected herselfтАФthe artifact on which she was half-sitting was
the next best thing to an upholstered womb for comfort. She was alone in an
apparently soundproof hospital room, in which the lighting was soft and indirect.
She was neither hungry nor unhungry, neither weary nor restless.
But she was uneasy, as though in the back halls of her mind there faintly yammered
an alarm bell she could not locate, an alarm clock she could not shut off. It was an
unreasoned conviction that something is wrong. UnreasonedтАФwas it therefore
unreasonable?
That called for a second opinion.
Before she had given herself up to cryogenic sleep, she had firmly instructed
herself not to be childishly startled by unfamiliar gadgetry when she woke. All the
same, she was startled to learn that her nurse-call buzzer was (a) cordless, (b)
conveniently accessible, and (c) nonspring-loaded, so that it could be thumbed
without effort. It was not the technology that was startlingтАФshe realized that such
technology had existed in her own timeтАФit was the thoughtful compassion which
had opted to use technology for patient-comfort. Maybe they've repealed Murphy's
Law, she thought wildly, and giggled. Now there's a dangerous vision for you..
She was even more profoundly startled to learn that the other end of the process
had been equally improved: her summons was answered at once. A tall, quite aged
man with a mane of white hair swept aside the curtain at the far corner (the room
couldn't be soundproof, then. Could it?) and stepped into the room. His clothing
startled her again. She was somewhat used to the notion of purely ornamental, rather
than functional, clothingтАФbut to her mind, "ornament" involved not-quite-concealing
the genitals. Embarrassed, and therefore furious with herself, she transferred her gaze
to his face, and felt her emotional turmoil fade, leaving only that original undefined
unease like a single rotting stump protruding from a vast tranquil lake.
His mouth was couched in strong wrinkles that spoke of frequent laughter and
tears, and his eyes were a clear warm blue beneath magnificent white eyebrows. She
wasтАж not capturedтАж held by those eyes; to meet them was to be stroked by
strong, healing hands, hands that gently probed and learned and comforted. They
made her smile involuntarily, and his answering smile was a kind of benediction, a
closing of a circuit between them.
And then those eyes seemed to see the rotting stump; the great white brow
frowned mightily. "What's the matter, Diana!"
She could not frame the words; they simply spilled out. "How much time has
passed?"
Comprehension seemed to dawn, yet the frown deepened. "Even more than you