"Theodore Sturgeon - The Perfect Host" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

She sank down with her forehead on the sill, slowly, as if some big slow weight were on her
shoulderblades. I could see only the top of her head, the two dank feathers of her hair, and the
point of an elbow. Homeland was a new residential suburb.
"Where in Homeland?" It seemed to be important. To me, I mean, as much as to her.
"Twenty," she mumbled. "I have to remember it . . ." and her voice trailed off. Suddenly she
stood bolt upright, looking back into the room as if something had happened there. Then she leaned
far out.
"Twenty sixty-five," she snarled. "You hear? Twenty sixty-five. That's the one."
"Ron! Ronnie!"
It was dad, coming down the path, looking at me, looking at the woman.
"That's the one," said the woman again.
There was a flurry of white behind her. She put one foot on the sill and sprang out at me. I
closed my eyes. I heard her hit the pavement.
When I opened my eyes they were still looking up at the window. There was a starched white


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nurse up there with her fingers in her mouth, all of them, and eyes as round and blank as a
trout's. I looked down.
I felt dad's hand on my upper arm. "Ronnie!"
I looked down. There was blood, just a little, on the cuff of my trousers. There was nothing
else.
"Dad...."
Dad looked all around, on the ground.
He looked up at the window and at the nurse. The nurse looked at dad and at me, and then put
her hands on the sill and leaned out and looked all around on the ground. I could see, in the
sunlight, where her fingers were wet from being in her mouth.
Dad looked at me and again at the nurse, and I heard him draw a deep quivering breath as if
he'd forgotten to breathe for a while and had only just realized it. The nurse straightened up,
put her hands over her eyes and twisted back into the room.
Dad and I looked at each other. He said, "Ronnie--what was--what ..." and then licked his
lips.
I was not as tall as my father, though he was not a tall man. He had thin, fine obedient hair,
straight and starting high. He had blue eyes and a big nose and his mouth was quiet. He was broad
and gentle and close to the ground, close to the earth.
I said, "How's mother?"
Dad gestured at the ground where something should be, and looked at me. Then he said, "We'd
better go, Ron."
I got into the car. He walked around it and got in and started it, and then sat holding the
wheel, looking back at where we had been standing. There was still nothing there. The red
squirrel, with one cheek puffed out, came bounding and freezing across the path.
I asked again how mother was.
"She's fine. Just fine. Be out soon. And the baby. Just fine." He looked back carefully for
traffic, shifted and let in the clutch. "Good as new," he said.
I looked back again. The squirrel hopped and arched and stopped, sitting on something. It sat
on something so that it was perhaps ten inches off the ground, but the thing it sat on couldn't be
seen. The squirrel put up its paws and popped a chestnut into them from its cheek, and put its
tail along its back with the big tip curled over like a fern frond, and began to nibble. Then I