"David Gerrold - Starsiders 2 - Bouncing off the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

and Whirlaway. There weren't many floors left to drop out from under us-and in a few minutes, we'd be
dropping even further away at several thousand klicks per hour. Douglas was right. We were on our
own. "Give him to me," I said. In the one-third pseudogravity of the cabin, Stinky was only cumbersome,
not heavy. He was still crying, but he reached for me-maybe I should have been flattered, but it seemed
like an ominous moment. Was I going to be the Stinky-wrangler now? Probably. Douglas was already
too much of an adult. He thought logic was sufficient. Well, so did I-but with Stinky, you have to use
Stinky-logic, which isn't like adult logic at all. "Hey, kiddo," I said, maneuvering him into a hug. "I didn't
get my hug either." He slid his arms around my neck in a near stranglehold. "Attaboy. We'll trade hugs.
But no doggy-slurps-" Even before I finished the sentence, Stinky was already licking my cheek-slurp,
slurp, slurp-like an affectionate puppy. It was his favorite game, because I always said, "Yick,
yick-bleccchhh! Dog germs!" And that was all it took. Mommy was forgotten for the moment. It was an
old game-it went back to the time I'd been whining for a puppy, and Mom had said, "No, we can't afford
a puppy-and besides, we've got the baby." "Stinky isn't a puppy!" I answered back. "Yes, I am!" Stinky
had shouted at me. He didn't even know what a dog was then. "Am too!" And then Weird had said, "Put
him on a leash, take him for a walk, you'll never know the difference," and that was how the slurp game
began. We didn't have a dog, we had Stinky. But I still would have preferred a dog. Most dogs drop
dead by the time they're Stinky's age. I tried to wipe my cheek, except the little monster had such a
hammerlock on me that I couldn't break free. Time for the next move in the game: "No hickeys! No
hickeys!" I shouted, and began tickling him unmercifully. He broke free in self-defense, shrieking in
feigned panic. I grabbed him in a bear hug, ready to tickle him senseless, then remembered where we
were and stopped before he peed in his pants. For a moment, we just stood where we were, him gasping
for breath and me just holding on. Hugging. I flopped backward onto the floor and pulled him down to
my lap, curling him into my arms. "I miss Mommy too," I said, almost forgetting about my cheek. He
wrapped his arms around me and hung on the way he'd done back in Arizona, in the big meteor crater.
Hard to believe that was only a week ago-Stinky had been acting up, as usual. He'd run away from us,
down the path that led around and around, down to the bottom of the crater. He was playing "You can't
catch me." Then he tripped and slid down the crater wall, and I'd
thought we were going to lose him, but he only slid a little way down and then stopped. I was closest to
him-I flattened myself on the ground and tried to get to him. But when I looked down that steep wall, all
the way to the bottom, I was paralyzed. But then Douglas grabbed me and Dad grabbed Douglas and I
grabbed Stinky, and somehow we all pulled each other back up onto the narrow path and ... for a
moment, we hung there on the wall of forever, everyone holding on to each other-and Stinky had
wrapped his arms around me like an octopus. When it happened, I was angry-so angry, I couldn't even
say how angry-but the whole thing also left me with a funny feeling about him. About what it would have
been like to lose him. And now that he was grabbing on to me the same way again, I began to realize
what the feeling was. It was the same thing I felt. A grab for safety. The difference was that Stinky had
someone to hang on to. So did Douglas, now-he had Mickey. I was the only one who didn't. Which was
sort of the way I wanted it, at least I thought I did. Except maybe I didn't. The enormity of what we'd
done was just starting to sink in. Mom and Dad's custody hearing had ended up in an emergency court
session in front of Judge Griffith. She thought she could resolve it by asking me what I wanted. And I-in
my infinite wisdom-had simply blurted out, "I want a divorce." I mean, if Mom and Dad could divorce
each other when things got ugly, why couldn't I divorce the both of them? All I'd wanted to do was make
them stop fighting over us kids so much- But Judge Griffith had taken my angry words at face value. She
gave Douglas his independence; that was okay, he was almost eighteen; and then she gave me a divorce
from Mom and Dad-and she assigned custody of both me and Stinky to Douglas. So yeah. At the time, it
seemed like a good idea. But now-here we were, alone in our cabin, and I was sitting on the floor,
holding Bobby in a daddy-hug because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I guess Bobby thought that
I could take care of him-but myself. I was torn between the feeling of not wanting him all over me and
knowing that I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. As little brothers go, he'd never been much fun.
And whose fault was that anyway ? I'd replayed this conversation in my head plenty enough