"Kate Wilhelm - Funeral" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

The Funeral

by Kate Wilhelm

No one could say exactly how old Madam Westfall was when she finally died. At least one hundred
twenty, it was estimated. At the very least. For twenty years Madam Westfall had been a shell
containing the very latest products of advances made in gerontology, and now she was dead. What lay
on the viewing dais was merely a painted, funereally garbed husk.

"She isn't real," Carla said to herself. "It's a doll, or something. It isn't really Madam Westfall." She kept
her head bowed, and didn't move her lips, but she said the words over and over. She was afraid to look
at a dead person. The second time they slaughtered all those who bore arms, unguided, mindless now,
but lethal with the arms caches that they used indiscriminately.

Carla felt goose bumps along her arms and legs. She wondered if anyone else had been hearing the old
Teacher's words.

The line moved slowly, all the girls in their long grey skirts had their heads bowed, their hands clasped.
The only sound down the corridor was the sush-sush of slippers on plastic flooring, the occasional rustle
of a skirt.

The viewing room had a pale green plastic floor, frosted-green plastic walls, and floor-to-ceiling
windows that were now slits of brilliant light from a westering sun. All the furniture had been taken from
the room, all the ornamentation. There were no flowers, nothing but the dais, and the bedlike box
covered by a transparent shield. And the Teachers. Two at the dais, others between the light strips, at
the doors. Their white hands clasped against black garb, heads bowed, hair slicked against each head,
straight parts emphasizing bilateral symmetry. The Teachers didn't move, didn't look at the dais, at the
girls parading past it.

Carla kept her head bowed, her chin tucked almost inside the V of her collarbone. The serpentine line
moved steadily, very slowly. "She isn't real," Carla said to herself, desperately now.

She crossed the line that was the cue to raise her head; it felt too heavy to lift, her neck seemed
paralyzed. When she did move, she heard a joint crack, and although her jaws suddenly ached, she
couldn't relax.

The second green line. She turned her eyes to the right and looked at the incredibly shrunken, hardly
human mummy. She felt her stomach lurch and for a moment she thought she was going to vomit. "She
isn't real. It's a doll. She isn't real!" The third line. She bowed her head, pressed her chin hard against her
collarbone, making it hurt. She couldn't swallow now, could hardly breathe. The line proceeded to the
South Door and through it into the corridor.

She turned left at the South Door and, with her eyes downcast, started the walk back to her genetics
class. She looked neither right nor left, but she could hear others moving in the same direction, slippers
on plastic, the swish of a skirt, and when she passed by the door to the garden she heard laughter of
some Ladies who had come to observe the viewing. She slowed down.

She felt the late sun hot on her skin at the open door and with a sideways glance, not moving her head,
she looked quickly into the glaring greenery, but could not see them. Their laughter sounded like music
as she went past the opening.