"Robert Charles Wilson - The Great Goodbye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robert Charles)

People could not have colonized any of these forbidding places (consider
Ganymede in its primeval state!) without the partnership of the New. In a way,
Grandfather said, this was the most appropriate place we could have come. It was a
monument to the long collaboration that was rapidly reaching its end.

The stars, at last, are within our grasp. The grasp, anyhow, of the New People. Was
this, I asked Grandfather, why he and I had to be so different from one another?

"Some people," he said, "some families, just happen to prefer the old ways. Soon
enough Earth will belong to the Stocks once again, though I'm not sure this is
entirely a good thing." And he looked at me sadly. "We've learned a lot from each
other. We could have learned more."

"I wish we could be together for centuries and centuries," I said.

I saw him for the last time (some years ago now) at the Shipworks,where the
picturesque ruins of Detroit rise from the Michigan Waters, and the star-travelling
Polises are assembled and wait like bright green baubles to lift, at last and forever,
into the sky. Grandfather had arranged this final meetingтАФin the flesh, so to speak.

We had delayed it as long as possible. New People are patient: in a way, that's the
point. Stock Humans have always dreamed of the stars, but the stars remain beyond
their reach. A Stock Human lifetime is simply too short; one or two hundred years
won't take you far enough. Relativistic constraints demand that travellers between the
stars must be at home between the stars. Only New People have the continuity, the
patience, the flexibility to endure and prosper in the Galaxy's immense voids.

I greeted Grandfather on the high embarkation platform where the wind was brisk
and cool. He lifted me up in his arms and admired me with his bright blue eyes. We
talked about trivial things, for the simple pleasure of talking. Then he said, "This isn't
easy, this saying goodbye. It makes me think of mortalityтАФthat old enemy."

"It's all right," I said.

"Perhaps you could still change your mind?"

I shook my head, no. A New Person can transform himself into a Stock Person and
vice versa, but the social taboos are strong, the obstacles (family dissension, legal
entanglements) almost insur-mountable, as Grandfather knew too well. And in any
case that wasn't my choice. I was content as I was. Or so I chose to believe.
"Well, then," he said, empty, for once, of words. He looked away. The Polis would
be rising soon, beginning its aeons-long navigation of our near stellar neighbours.
Discovering, no doubt, great wonders.

"Goodbye, boy," he said.

I said, "Goodbye, Grandfather."

Then he rose to his full height on his many translucent legs, winked one dish-sized
glacial blue eye, and walked with a slow machinely dignity to the vessel that would