"Michael Swanwick - Mother Grasshopper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

Slowly, she tumbled to the ground.

It was then, while I stood stunned and unbelieving, that the magician came
walking up to me.

In my imagination I'd run through this scene a thousand times: Leaving my bag
behind, I stumbled off the train, toward him. He made no move to escape. I
flipped open my jacket with a shrug of the shoulder, drew out the revolver with
my good hand, and fired.

Now, though...

He looked sadly down at Victoria's body and put an arm around my shoulders.

"God," he said, "don't they just break your heart?"

I stayed on a month at the Sky Terminus to watch my son grow up. Jonathan died
without offspring and was given an orbital burial. His coffin circled the
grasshopper seven times before the orbit decayed and it scratched a bright
meteoric line down into the night. The flare lasted about as long as would a
struck sulfur match.

He'd been a good man, with a wicked sense of humor that never came from my side
of the family.

So now I wander the world. Civilizations rise and fall about me. Only I remain
unchanged. Where things haven't gotten too bad, I scatter mortality. Where they
have I unleash disease.

I go where I go and I do my job. The generations rise up like wheat before me,
and like a harvester I mow them down. Sometimes -- not often -- I go off by
myself, to think and remember. Then I stare up into the night, into the
colonized universe, until the tears rise up in my sight and drown the swarming
stars.

I am Death and this is my story.