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

check up on them. The next time he was in the break
room, I sat down next to him and said tell me some
more about this woman that was dirtside with you. I
guess you got plenty, huh?

He just looked at me for maybe two minutes. I knew he
was talking in his head. He'd been alone for so long. I
ran into a guy once who had tended a navigation beacon
way out on the Rim for ten years. You do that, and the
severance pay's a fortune. Go in at thirty--you've got to
be at least thirty--and come out at forty, rich for life.
What they don't tell you is that most of them go crazy.
Anyway, he said you get to talking to yourself. When
they finally pull you out, you try to stop and you don't
talk to anybody, just in your head. You haven't talked to
anybody for so long that talking out loud is the same as
talking to yourself, as far as you're concerned.

Finally he said, "She was old. Terribly old and dying. I
thought I told you."

I said, yeah, I guess you did.

"Millions and millions of years old, and used to think
she'd never die. But it was all over for her, and she knew
it. We never wanted to help her. We never wanted to
save her, and now we couldn't if we wanted to. It's too
late. Too late ..."

After that he started to cry. I listened to it and sort of
tapped his shoulder and talked to him for as long as it
took to finish my caff. But he didn't say anything else
that day.

The next day he sort of motioned to me to come over
and sit with him. He'd never done that before. So I did.

"She could make pictures in your head." He was
whispering. "Show you things. Did I tell you about that?"

He never had, and I said so.

"They're trying to make me forget the leaves. Billions
and billions of leaves, all sizes and shapes and shades of
green, and the rising sun turning them gold. Sometimes
the bottom was a different color, and when the wind
blew the whole tree would change."

I wanted to ask what a tree was, but I figured I could just
look it up and kept quiet.