"Vukcevich-NoComet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vukcevich Ray)

RAY VUKCEVICH

NO COMET

CONVINCED THAT MY SLANT on Bohr's version of the Copenhagen interpretation of
quantum mechanics was our last hope, I bullied Jane, who didn't want to be
married to me anymore, and Sacha into cooperating with a final desperate attempt
to save the world.

"This is stupid, Tim," lane said, her voice softened a little by the brown paper
bag over her head.

"La la, la la, la la," Sacha sang. She banged the heels of her shoes against the
legs of her chair in time to her tune. Wearing a bag over her head was still
fun, I thought, but our daughter was seven and had fidgeting down to a fine art.
How long would she stick with me?

I'd pushed away my plate, but there was a sticky spot, orange marmalade
probably, where I would have liked to put my hands. I put them in my lap
instead. Breakfast had been tense. Jane had banged some pots around, scorched
some eggs, burned some toast, warmed some bacon. I wished I'd brushed my teeth
before I put a bag over my own head.

Everything was tan, but not an even tan, I imagined it was like looking through
the dry, mottled skin of some desert creature, maybe a horned toad. There was a
seam where the brown paper overlapped and joined to make a bag, and I couldn't
see much light through that double layer. If I tilted my head back carefully, I
could see what looked like the letter H in some fancy font (except for the way
the seam came up and touched the cross piece of the H) made from the overlaps
needed to square off and seal the bottom of the bag.

"I don't think I could have missed the fact that a comet is about to hit the
Earth, Tim," Jane said.

"Do you read the newspapers?"

"No."

"Do you watch TV?"

"You know I don't."

"How about the radio?"

"Well, no. Not today."

"None of your goofy friends do either." I nailed down my point. "So just how do
you think you would have heard about it?"