"Jeff VanderMeer - A Heart For Lucretia" - 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