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

a new face stared up from the pits, the arms of the body reaching out
but frozen, the eyes blank. Perhaps the meerkats never honored their
agreement. Or...

That summer, as the stars watched overhead, an angel descended to the
desert floor. And, when it departed, Lucretia arose from the dead and
danced like a will o' whisp over the shifting sands. She danced
fitfully,
anger and sadness throbbing in her new heart.
That winter, Flesh Dog and Gerard limped back to the creche. He did not
speak now. Always, he looked toward the south, toward the great sea and
the city with no name, as though expecting strangers. Always, as he sat
by
the fire and sucked his food with toothless gums, Gerard-Flesh Dog
looked
at Lucretia, the Lucretia who saw only that Flesh Dog had returned a
mute,
and smiled his permanent smile. Beneath the folds of tissue, Gerard's
smoky-green eyes stared, silently begging for rescue. But Lucretia
never
dared pull back the folds to see for herself, perhaps afraid of what
she
might find there. Sometimes she would dream of the city, of what had
happened there, but the vision would desert her upon waking, the only
mark
the tears she had wept while asleep.
After a year, the men of the creche held a funeral for Gerard. After
two
years, Lucretia married a wealthy water dower and, though she treated
Flesh Dog tenderly, he was never more than an animal to her.
 Afterword
Cordwainer Smith has always been my primary SF influence. His ability
to
create SF that truly feels alien still startles and enthralls me.
I wanted to bring a mythical element to this -- I wanted to write a
story
set in the far future that is actually written about the distant past.
If
that sounds contradictory, it really isn't. As I wrote the story, I
imagined myself as a storyteller in the year 12,000 AD writing a story
about the year 11,500 AD. Thus the mythic can mix with the science
fictional with no harm done to either.
Added to these elements were the real-life worries I had for my sister,
whose heart problems had become life-threatening.
Finally, any far future scenario that is "realistic" -- at least
psychologically realistic -- has to contain two elements: (1) the
presence
of some other sentient species than humankind, probably created by
humankind and (2) consequences for our short-term environmental
policies