"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Questing Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

THE QUESTING MIND

Maybe you can help out--it seems there ought to be a good punch line to the
question "What did the editor say to the former editor?" Any good lines escape
me. The reality is that when I speak with Kris Rusch lately, l mention to her
how busy I am ... and she laughs knowingly. Then I realized that her SF novel
Alien Influences and her mainstream novel Hitler's Angel came out within months
of ench other, and I learned that the manuscript for Victory, the fifth and
final volume of "The Fey" series, requites a team and a half of paper and I
think that laugh of hers is more than just knowing. It's almost ominous.
Fortunately, Kris is not too busy to send an occasional tale out way ...

He tries to remember. The nurses don't understand that. They think it odd that
he requests audio tapes of the books he has written, videos of the interviews he
has given, and photograph albums of times past. The nurses also give him three-d
moving pictures of his last few years, pictures so tiny they rest in the palm of
his hand. In them, the people turn like toy dolls, but he cannot feel their feet
against his skin. Outside the door, he hears the nurses whispering, "Sad old
man. He's got nothing left to live for, so he lives in his past."

Only he doesn't have any memories except inconsequential ones: the runny eggs he
had for breakfast, the plot of the crime drama he watched the night before on
the wide screen television placed at the perfect distance from his bed. He has a
superficial knowledge of everything he has done, like a back-of-the-book bio
sheet written about someone else:

J. REED BRASHER, novelist, playwright, and essayist, born 1920 in Camden, New
Jersey to physician Paul Brasher and his wife Mary.

Published his first novel, Golden Sunset, in 1945. Wrote sixteen Broadway plays,
including the Tony Award winning Stations in the Sky (1960). Published five
books of essays, the last an autobiographical sketch. Married Olive Franklin in
1942, fathered two daughters, Mary and Paula. List of publications (including
all 55 novels) follows.

But the memories are gone, stolen an incident at a time. He had noticed the
first one missing on his ninetieth birthday when his daughter, Paula, asked him
to recite her favorite bedtime story to his great-grandson. He did not remember
telling bedtime stories, and said so. She reminded him of that only this
morning, when he asked what day she first noticed his memory slipping.

"It's normal, Dad. The mind goes with age."

But not his mind. His mind has controlled his entire life. He knows that with
the same certainty with which he knows he is male. He remembers the feeling of
control, but he does not remember the incidents that triggered it.
It is the ultimate curse. His body is now so feeble that he cannot spend much
time out of bed. If he does, the nurses come after him as if he were a child.