"divine invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (divineinvasion)

"Of course. I am going to spend several days here at the school watching to see how you handle the children. If I do not approve, if you use too much physical force, I am taking Manny out, law or no law. I presume you will be teaching him the usual bullshit that goes on in these schools. It's not something I'm especially pleased about, but neither is it something that worries me. Once I am satisfied with the school you will be paid for a year ahead. I object to bringing him here, but that is the law. I don't hold you personally responsible." Elias Tate smiled.

Wind blew through the canes of bamboo growing at the rim of the play area. Manny listened to the wind, cocking his head and frowning. Elias patted him on the shoulder and wondered what the wind was telling the boy. Does it say who you are? he wondered. Does it tell you your name?

The name, he thought, that no one is to say.

A child, a little girl wearing a white frock, approached Manny, her hand out. "Hi," she said. "You're new.

The wind, in the bamboo, rustled on.

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Although dead and in cryonic suspension, Herb Asher was having his own problems. Very close to the Cry-Labs, Incorporated, warehouse a fifty-thousand-watt FM transmitter had been located the year before. For reasons unknown to anyone the cryonic equipment had begun picking up the powerful nearby FM signal. Thus Herb Asher, as well as everyone else in suspension at Cry-Labs, had to listen to elevator music all day and all night, the station being what it liked to call a "pleasing sounds" outfit.

Right now an all-string version of tunes from Fiddler on the Roof assailed the dead at Cry-Labs. This was especially distasteful to Herb Asher because he was in the part of his cycle where he was under the impression that he was still alive. In his frozen brain a limited world stretched out of an archaic nature; Herb Asher supposed himself to be back on the little planet of the CY3O-CY3OB system where he had maintained his dome in those crucial years . . . crucial, in that he had met Rybys Rommey, migrated back to Earth with her, after formally marrying her, and then getting himself interrogated by the Terran authorities and, as if that were not enough, getting himself perfunctorily killed in an air collision that was in no way his fault. Worse yet, his wife had been killed and in such a fashion that no organ transplant would revive her; her pretty little head, as the robot doctor had explained it to Herb, had been riven in twain-a typical robot word-choice.

However, inasmuch as Herb Asher imagined himself still back in his dome in the star system CY3O-CY3OB, he did not realize that Rybys was dead. In fact he did not know her yet. This was before the arrival of the supplyman who had brought him news of Rybys in her own dome.

--------------------

Herb Asher lay on his bunk listening to his favorite tape of Linda Fox. He was trying to account for a background noise of soupy strings rendering songs from one or another of the well- known light operas or Broadway shows or some damn thing of the late twentieth century. Apparently his receiving and recording gear needed an overhaul. Perhaps the original signal from which he had made the Linda Fox tape had drifted. Fuck it, he thought dismally. I'll have to do some repairing. That meant getting out of his bunk, finding his tool kit, shutting down his receiving and recording equipment-it meant work.



Meanwhile, he listened with eyes shut to the Fox.

Weep you no more, sad fountains;

What need you flow so fast?

Look how the snowy mountains

Heaven's sun doth gently waste.

But my sun's heavenly eyes

View not your weeping

That now lies sleeping...

This was the best song the Fox had ever sung, from the Third and Last Booke of lute songs of John Dowland who had lived at the time of Shakespeare and whose music the Fox had remastered for the world of today.

Annoyed by the interference, he shut off the tape transport with his remote programmer. But, mirabile dictu, the soupy string music continued, even though the Fox fell silent. So, resigned, he shut off the entire audio system.

Even so, Fiddler on the Roof in the form of eighty-seven strings continued. The sound of it filled his little dome, audible over the gjurk-gjurk of the air compressor. And then it came to him that he had been hearing Fiddler on the Roof for-good God!-it was something like three days, now.

This is awful, Herb Asher realized. Here I am billions of miles out in space listening to eighty-seven strings forever and ever. Something is wrong.

Actually a lot of things had gone wrong during the recent year. He had made a dreadful mistake in emigrating from the Sol System. He had failed to note that return to the Sol System became automatically illegal for ten full years. This was how the dual state that governed the Sol System guaranteed a flow of people out and away but no flow back in return. His alternative had been to serve in the Army, which meant certain death. SKY OR FRY was the slogan showing up on government TV commercials. You either emigrated or they burned your ass in some fruitless war.