"Gene Wolfe - Castaway" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

"The rations ran out," he said. "I had to eat whatever I
could find. There's still a few plants. They're not good,
but you can eat them if you boil them long enough and
keep changing the water."

I said you were there all alone, huh? It must've been
double duty.

Of course that shut him up again, but next day he came
in about ten minutes after I got off shift. He sat down
right where he'd sat before. All the tables are white and
so are the chairs, so it doesn't make any difference
where you sit, it's all the same. Only he knew somehow,
and that's where he sat. I carried my caff over and sat
down across from him and waited.

About ten minutes after that he said, "There was a
woman. A woman was there with me. I wasn't alone.
No. Not really. Not with her there."

I said you should have told us. We'd have taken her off,
too.

He just shook his head.

Later he said it was too late for her. "She's old," he said.
"Old and ugly, and she can't think any more. She tries to
think of new things, but nothing comes. Nothing works
now, and sometimes she can't think at all. She told me.
You've got a good medpod. That's what they say."

I guess I nodded.

"I've been spending a lot of time in there. Maybe it's
helping. I don't know. But it wouldn't help her."

Then he reached over and grabbed my wrist--his hand
was like a vise. "We could have saved her. Earlier. We
could have made her young again. We could have taken
her away. We could have done it. Nothing stopping us."

Next day he wouldn't talk at all, or the day after that
either. I guess I should have just let him alone, but I was
sick of talking to the other guys in the crew. I'd been
talking to them ever since I signed on, and I knew what
they were going to say and the games they wanted to
play and what all their jokes were.
So I tried to figure out a way to get him going again.
Everybody likes to brag, right? Especially when you can't