"Robert F. Young - The Moon of Advanced Learning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

saw clearly that without the plant there would be no Donora, Pennsylvania, and that clean air would cost
them their paychecks. People can live with pollution, but they cannot live without paychecks.
I wonder if the thinkers in the Moon of Advanced Learning have thoughts like these.
Probably not. Probably they are thinking about black holes.

I buy a sixpack in an all-night delicatessen and walk the remaining distance to my house. It is a
well-built house with a full cellar, but the neighborhood is run down. I have painted it and have repaired
the veranda, so it looks real nice. But there is nothing I can do about the houses next door or the houses
across the street or the bottles the kids break on the pavement or the refuse that keeps accumulating
along the curbs. Unfortunately the houses in this section of Chenango were built on narrow lots so that
someone living in one house can reach out his side windows and almost touch the side of the house next
door. And while all of the houses have long, narrow backyards, none of them has a front yard over three
feet in width. But all of them, like mine, are well built. If they are never razed, they will outlast by
generations the ranchstyle my father built in the suburbs.
Our electricar is parked in the street. I check to see whether it is locked; then I climb the veranda
steps and knock on the front door, which Betty keeps locked after dark. She lets me in and we kiss in
the foyer. When I am on the afternoon shift she always prepares a late supper for me. I wash my hands in
the kitchen sink (I have showered at the mill) and sit down at the kitchen table and open one of the
bottles from the sixpack. The beer is coldтАФthe delicatessen keeps all its beer refrigerated. I drink it from
the bottle. Supper is not quite ready yet. Betty knows I like to drink a beer or two before I eat. The kids
are in bedтАФthey have had a hard day playing. Janet is five. Little Chuck is four.
Betty is frying pork chops and boiling potatoes. She was a tall, dark-haired beauty in school. She is
still a tall, dark-haired beauty, but she has gained weight. She goes to a weight-watchers class twice each
week, but so far it has had no effect. Her bottom is firm and neatly rounded. That is the way they say it in
books: firm and neatly rounded. She wears tight slacks to make it seem more so, but the slacks can't
quite cope with the number of pounds she has put on around her waist. I do not mind this, but she thinks
I do. She does sitting-up exercises every morning. Her father is a steelworker too, but unlike my father,
he has thirty years in and is eligible for retirement and does not need to worry about the forthcoming
shutdown.
As I finish my second bottle of beer, Betty sets the table. She always waits to eat supper with me
when I am on the afternoon shift, and presently she joins me at the table. She has had little to say since I
got home. She is quiet because she is scared. She has been scared ever since the company announced
that the mill is going to be shut down.
In addition to pork chops and mashed potatoes she prepared a tossed salad and boiled
corn-on-the-cob. She also baked a banana-cream pie. I have two pieces. She has only a sliver. "Are we
going to your father's on Sunday?" she asks.
"He's expecting us."
"Why doesn't he ever come here when both of you get a Sunday off at the same time?"
"I think he likes to show off his new house."
"I think he's homesick for Chenango," Betty says. "I think he knows that if he comes to our house,
he'll get more homesick yet."
"I don't see why. He sees the town every time he comes to work."
"Seeing it and living in it aren't quite the same thing."
She pours coffee and we sit there for a while talking about the kids. Neither of us brings up the
subject of the mill. While she is doing dishes I go outside and stand in the backyard. The Moon of
Advanced Learning is almost directly above the house. There is a reassuring quality about its light. The
advanced thinkers are multinational. Two of them are Americans, one is French, one is an Israeli, one is
English, and one is Norwegian. All have giant brains. Their avowed purpose, according to the media, is
to improve the lot of mankind, but I do not think they are thinking of mankind in the present tense; I think
they are thinking of mankind of the future. I do not think they are looking down upon us as their little