"Jeff VanderMeer - A Heart For Lucretia (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

A Heart for Lucretia
a short story by Jeff VanderMeer

This is the story of a brother, a sister, and a Flesh Dog, and how two
found a heart for the third. The story has both oral and written
traditions, with no two versions the same. It begins, for our purposes,
with the city...

"The city, she has parts. The city, she is dead, but people live there,
underground. They have parts..."
Gerard Mkumbi cared little for what Con Newman said, despite the man's
seniority and standing in the creche. But, finally, the moans as the
wheezing autodoc worked on his sister persuaded him. The autodoc said
Lucretia needed a new heart. A strong heart, one which would allow her to
spring up from their sandy burrows hale and willowy, to dance again under
the harvest moon. Gerard had hoped to trade places so that the tubes would
stick out from his chest, his nose, his arms, the bellows compression
pumping in out, in out. But no. He had the same defect, though latent, the
autodoc told him. A successful transplant would only begin the cycle anew.


In Lucretia's room, at twilight, he read to her from old books:
Bellafonte's Quadraphelix, The Metal Dragon and Jessible, others of their
kind. A dread would possess him as he watched his sister, the words dry
and uncomforting on his lips. Lucretia had high cheekbones, smoky-green
eyes, and mocha skin which had made all the young men of the creche flock
to her dance.
But wrinkles crowded the corners of those eyes and Gerard could detect a
slackness to the skin, the flesh beneath, which hinted at decay. The
resolve for health had faltered, the usually clenched chin now sliding
into the neck; surely a trick of shadow. Anyone but Gerard would have
thought her forty-five. He knew she was twenty-seven. They had been born
minutes apart, had shared the same womb. Watching her deterioration was to
watch his own. Would he look this way at forty-five?
"Gerard," she would call out, her hand curling into his...
It had become a plea. He forced himself to hold her hand for hours, though
the thought of such decay made him ill. The autodoc insisted on keeping
her drugged so she could not feel the pain. Could she even recognize him
anymore, caught as she was between wakefulness and sleep, sleep and death?

Flesh Dog, eyes hidden beneath the rolls of raw tissue which were its
namesake, stayed always by his side. Flesh Dog shared few words with
Gerard, but every twitch of its muzzle toward Lucretia or the squat metal
autodoc reminded Gerard she would die soon--too soon, like their mother
before her. Unless a miracle arose from the desert.
"The city, she has parts..."
And, finally, he had gone, taking Flesh Dog with him.

Thus it begins. The ending is another matter, a creature of fragments
and glimpses which pieced together only tease...