"Aldridge, Ray - Filter FeedersV1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldridge Ray)

She looked back over her shoulder, toward the dark shoreline from which she had come, and saw two men standing there, lit faintly by the glow of their cigarettes. Were these the bums Linda had warned her against? The idea of rowing back to the beach lost all of its appeal, and she climbed aboard Rosemary, making a clatter.

The main hatch doors were hooked back, showing a trapezoid of blackness. When she looked in, she saw, dimly, Thomas gazing back at her.

"I want to talk to you," she said.

He nodded and came up the companionway ladder.

She backed away, sat down on a dew-soaked cushion. "What did you do? To the Sailorman?"

He stood beside the wheel, looking off across the harbor. "You make a large assumption, Teresa."

But there was no denial in his voice, and she began to feel more sure of herself. "Tell me the truth," she said.

"What did he say?"

This question took her aback. "Does it matter? He said he remembered something . . . an excuse, I suppose."

"What if it were not an excuse?"

She thought about that. She thought about the name of the boat, and the quote from Shakespeare: Rosemary, that's for remembrance.

"What did he remember?" she asked.

The moon broke through the clouds, so that his eyes glittered strangely. "An unpleasant man," Thomas said. "But not a detached one. At least this much can be said of him: he gets his money's worth from his experiences. He is not guilty of thinking too much."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, bewildered.

"The Sailorman was remembering a day long ago, when he went fishing off a dock in Tarpon Springs on a day he should have been in school. He paid no attention to his fishing; he had just been rejected by a girl named Dorothy and he was planning, in cool blood, a revenge."

The conversation had become bizarre. She waited, hoping he would explain.

Thomas sat down beside her, and it occurred to her that he seemed so odd partly because he used none of the ordinary range of non-verbal expression. He did not shrug, or sigh, or make any other sort of gesture. He still wore the same faint smile.

"I read many books," he said.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. I have a good library aboard -- the classics and various serious modem writers. And then, we trade paperbacks with other cruisers, so I get to read a good deal of ephemera as well." He said this with no air of judgment. "Recently I read a little anthology of science fiction stories. They were uneven in quality; most were forgettable." He spoke the last word very softly. "There was one that at least had an interesting line. The protagonist is in space, looking out at a big orbital billboard. It advertises a chemical memory stimulant. The billboard's message is: 'Now you too can remember those important things you were too stupid to notice when they happened.'"

"What?"

"Most people do not, you know. They do not notice many of the important things. Though it is not stupidity, that is not the source of their failure. You are not a stupid person, Teresa."

"What does this have to do with the Sailorman?" She grew annoyed by what she took to be a deliberate mocking obscurity.

Thomas looked at her and though his expression never altered she had a sudden strong sense of expectation. "I am something like that memory-stimulating product."

"I don't understand." But she was beginning to understand; she remembered Linda, in the sandwich shop, telling her that Thomas had shown her that her life had not been empty, after all. "What are you?"