"Gene Wolfe - Bea and Her Bird Brother" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

Bea and Her Bird Brother by Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe reports that his new Latro novel, Soldier of Sidon, should be out in the fall. He's also
working with artist Lisa Snellings-Clark on a chapbook, the title of which will probably be Strange
Birds. Word is that the chapbook will probably be published in early June. His latest tale is short
but potent.
****
"You just missed your brother," the nurse said.

Bea glanced at her watch. "He can't have stayed long." It was six; visiting hours were six to eight.

"He wasn't supposed to be in there," the nurse said. "I didn't see him until he left."

Bea signed the screen and went to the elevator. It was smooth and silent--remarkably so, she thought,
for a hospital built in the nineteen-twenties.

The corridor looked clean, though she knew the boy-high dark green and the tousled-hair-to-ceiling light
green had been chosen to hide dirt. Before she was born these walls had been white and immaculately
clean and these halls had smelled of disinfectant instead of room deodorant.

Things didn't always get better. Sometimes they got worse. Dad would go. Soon. Very soon. Go, and
never come back to her.

"Hello, Dad." She gave the old man in the bed her best and brightest. "How are you feeling today?"

"Light." His voice was thin but melodious, as if some tiny person in his throat were playing a flute. Old
men were not supposed to have voices like that. For the first time it occurred to her that no one enforced
such things.

"Sit down, Bea. I can't see you."

She sat, the hospital chair so low, and the hospital bed so high, that their faces were nearly at a level.
"Did Benjy come? One of the nurses said he had."

"Him?" The fluting little voice was not contemptuous, only tired. "He won't come. Never."

His eyes turned toward her, moving more slowly than other eyes. Their whites were yellow. "You're
sitting. That's good. I've got to tell you about the bird people."

Bird watchers, she thought.

"The Big Folks didn't like us, Bea. Spread poison to wipe us out. Me and Annie, we run. Maybe others
run, too. I don't know. Only there wasn't any with us. It was just me and Annie for ... I don't know. It
seems long sometimes, when I think back. Only...."

"Who was Annie, Dad?"

"Maybe it was only a day or two. Maybe three before they got her. After I buried her, I just kept going
deeper in to get away from them, Bea. Oh, I knew where a gate was. I just didn't want to go back. Back
to what? That was the question. That was always it. Ugly buildings on ugly streets and work I hated. That
was what it was to me, and I knew it and didn't want it."