"Matt Ruff - Set This House in Order" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ruff Matt)

out of the lake knowing how to speak. I had a concept of the world and at least some of what was in it. I
knew what dogs, snowflakes, and ferryboats were before I ever saw a real dog, snowflake, or ferryboat.
So it may seem natural to ask, if my father could give me all that, why couldn't he also give me the
know-how to be a champion restocker? For that matter, why couldn't he give me Aunt Sam's
understanding of French, Seferis's martial-arts prowess, and Adam's knack for lie-detecting?
I wish I knew, because there are times when all of those skills would come in handy. Of course I
can always have Aunt Sam translate for me, Seferis stands ready to defend the body at a moment's
notice, and Adam hangs out in the pulpit calling bullshit on people whether I ask him to or not, but none
of that is quite as good as having the abilities myself. For one thing, help from other souls isn't free -- they
expect favors in return, and not all of their wishes are easy to grant. It would be much simpler, and
cheaper, if I could just borrow their talents somehow.
The reason why such borrowing isn't possible, my father thinks, has to do with the difference
between information and experience. If you'd asked me on the day I was born to tell you what rain is, I'd
have given you the dictionary definition. Ask me today and I'll still give you the dictionary definition -- but
as I'm giving it, I'll think of that moment on overcast mornings when you have to decide whether an
umbrella is worth taking with you (the answer, in these parts, usually being yes). Or I'll think of the
upside-down world reflected in puddles, or the awful tacky feeling of a drenched wool sweater, or the
smell of wet leaves in Lake Sammamish State Park. Experience hasn't changed the form of my answer
much, but the meaning of my answer has been utterly transformed.
Memory makes the difference. There are facts that everyone knows, but memories, and the
feelings they evoke, are unique to individual souls. Memories can be described, but can never truly be
shared; and knowledge that is bound up in especially strong memories can't be shared either. Like Aunt
Sam's knowledge of French: it's more than just grammar and vocabulary, it's the memory of her high
school teacher Mr. Canivet, the first adult she ever knew who didn't betray her in some way, who always
treated her kindly and never hurt her. I never met Mr. Canivet, and can't love him the way Aunt Sam
does. Any feelings I have about him are purely secondhand, and the things Aunt Sam learned from him
will always be secondhand to me too.
My father's job experience had the same sort of proprietary quality. It couldn't be shared; it had
to be acquired personally. We tried coaching for a few weeks -- my father guiding me step by step from
the pulpit, answering a thousand questions about RAM chips and SCSI ports and null-modem cables --
but there was just too much to learn in too short a time. Given six months we might have managed it, but
by the end of the third week my father's work-performance rating -- my work-performance rating -- had
deteriorated to the point where we were in danger of being fired.
Of course it didn't help that my father hadn't told his coworkers about me; I still think he would
have done better to be open about the fact that he was training a replacement. But two involuntary
commitments had left him reluctant to reveal his multiplicity to people, and while he'd risked trusting Mrs.
Winslow, nobody at Bit Warehouse knew. Not knowing, they were mystified when Andy Gage started
acting like a whole other person -- one who was constantly distracted and had trouble with even the
simplest tasks.
Mr. Weeks, my supervisor, was especially concerned; after I accidentally reformatted the hard
drive on the Warehouse's main inventory computer, he wondered aloud whether I'd been using drugs.
"We could try telling him the truth," I suggested. "We could tell everybody the truth."
"Not everybody would understand," my father replied. "It's a complicated truth, and people don't
like complications. Especially people in authority. You'll learn."
You'll learn. That was my father's stock response whenever I asked a question that only
experience could answer. I heard it a lot in those days, and it was frustrating, for him as well as for me.
He'd thought that the hard part was over once he got the house built; turning things over to me was
supposed to be easy. But he was still learning from experience, too.
One thing we'd both learned was that I couldn't just step into my father's old life. I had to create
my own: find my own job, choose my own friends -- and make my own decisions about who to trust.