"Thomas M. Disch - The Genocides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

hotter, his whole body would be covered with sap. The sap would bake dry, and
when he moved, the stiffened cloth would tear out the crusted hairs of his
body, one by one. The worst of that was over now, thank heaven--the body has a
finite number of hairs--but there were still the flies that swarmed over his
flesh to feed on the sap. He hated the flies, which did not seem to be finite.
When he had reached the foot of the decline and was in the middle of the
field, Buddy set one bucket down and began to feed the thirsty young plants
from the other. Each plant received about a pound of thick green nutrient--
and to good effect. It wasn't the Fourth yet, and already many plants were up
over his knees. Corn would have grown well in the rich lake-bottom soil in any
case, but with the additional nourishment they drew from the stolen sap, the
plants throve phenomenally--as though they were in central Iowa instead of
northern Minnesota. This unwitting parasitism of the corn served another
purpose besides, for as the corn throve, the Plants whose sap they had drunk
died, and each year the limit of the field could be pushed a bit farther.


It had been Anderson's idea to pit the Plant against itself this way,
and every corn plant in the field was a testimony to his, judgment. Looking
down the long rows, the old man felt like a prophet in full view of his
prophecy. His regret now was that he hadn't thought of it sooner--before the
diaspora of his village, before the Plants had vanquished his and his
neighbors' farms.
_If only_ . . .
But that was history, water under the bridge, spilt milk, and as such it
belonged to a winter evening in the commonroom when there was time for idle
regrets. Now, and for the rest of that long day, there was work to do.
 Anderson looked about for his sons. They were straggling behind, still
emptying their second buckets over the roots of the corn.
"Get the lead out!" he yelled. Then, turning back up the hill with his
two buckets empty, he smiled a thin, joyless smile, the smile of a prophet,
and spat out, through the gap between his front teeth, a thin stream of the
juice of the Plant that he had been chewing.
He hated the Plants, and that hatred gave him strength.


They worked, sweating in the sun, till noonday. Buddy's legs were
trembling from the strain and from hunger. But each trip down the rows of corn
was shorter, and when he returned to the Plant there was a moment (and each a
little longer than the last) before the buckets filled, when he could rest.
Sometimes, though he did not like the vaguely aniselilce taste, he would
stick his finger into the bucket and lick off the bittersweet syrup. It did
not nourish, but it allayed for a while the worst of his hunger. He might have
chewed the pulp carved from the phloem of the trunk, as his father and Neil
did, but "chewing" reminded him of the life he had tried to escape ten years
before, when he had left the farm for the city. His escape had failed, as
surely as the cities themselves had failed. At last, just as in the parable,
he would have been content with the husks the swine ate, and he had returned
to Tassel and to his father's farm.
True to form, the fatted calf had been killed, and if his return had