"Michael Swanwick - Walking Out" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

whenever the wife got one of her cravings. There were kids playing wall
ball outside, but they weren't going any higher than the third floor, so the
noise was tolerable.
The clincher was that the surrounding buildings opened up in a way
that gave him a completely unobstructed view of Jupiter through the city
dome. Terry was a sucker for cloudgazing. He could sit and watch the
planet's slow-swirling weather fronts endlessly shifting from pattern to
pattern for hours.



It was evening when Terry finally went home, and all the city lights were
blue-shifting into twilight. He felt weary but virtuous. Krissie, he knew,
would be pleased, and that was all that really mattered.
There were two strangers in the flat when he came in. A slender woman
and a real bruiser of a man. From the quiet neutrality of their dress, Terry
guessed they were counselors or therapists of some sort.
"Hello," he said pleasantly. "What's going on?"
"Terry," his wife said. "A woman called from the Housing Authority.
She told me how you behaved and IтАФ" She looked helplessly about her
"And IтАФ"
"Mr. Bissel," the woman said. "You've been telling people that you plan
to move out of the city."
"Yeah, so? That's not a crime. I mean, look around you. It's a perfectly
rational response to an intolerable situation." Krissie was crying again.
"You want to move to . . . New England, is it?"
"Look." He spread his hands in bafflement. "What is all this?"
Kris stepped close to him. Through angry tears she said, "The War,
TerryтАФremember the War? There is no New England, not anymore. Three
weeks the asteroids fell. Three weeks! The clouds covered the skies for
years!" She was hysterical now, babbling. "Everything was
destroyedтАФEarth, Mars, all the colonies. The cities. My mother. All of
them." She began punching him on the chest. "My brother Allen! Mrs.
Kressner! Jamal Hardessy! Angela Hughes!"
The burly man slid himself between them. Gently he placed his
enormous hands on Terry's arms. It was like being gripped by a mountain.
"Don't bother, Mrs. Bissel," he said. "We get a lot of these cases. More
every year. They never listen."
The woman opened the door. "He'll be taken care of," she said.
"Where are you taking him?" Kris asked fearfully.
"Someplace pleasant," the man said. "You'll be informed when he's
ready for visitors."
"But you can't. I need him here. My God, there's a baby on the way!"
 "Mrs. Bissel. We cannot allow your husband to wander about loose. His
illnessтАФit's like a virus. It could infect others. He's a threat to the survival
of the city."
"Oh, not my husband. You don't know Terry. He's a good man. HeтАФ"
Harshly the woman said, "It may not show ordinarily. But we're all
precariously balanced. This exaggerated kindness we show each other, our
horror of conflict, the cult of preservationтАФthese are signs of denial. All