"Michael Kandel - Hooking Up" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kandel Michael)

MICHAEL KANDEL

HOOKING UP

WHAT'S THE MATTER, TOPAZ? asked her mother, pushing her gently toward the door.
Topaz said, Nothing. Come on, dear, coaxed her mother in that patient, sad way
she had, which made Topaz do whatever her mother wanted. All right, said Topaz,
and took a deep breath, shut her eyes for a moment, then opened them and went
in.

The children turned to look, just as she expected. The teacher came over with a
smile, took Topaz by the hand, and said, Class, this is Topaz. They all stopped
what they were doing and stared. There must have been a hundred of them. Some of
them were mouthing the word Topaz, some were just staring, and a few in the back
were making faces. She looked at the floor, she couldn't help it. There were too
many eyes on her.

You'll sit over here, the teacher said, right by me, and gave her a quick hug so
she wouldn't be afraid anymore. The teacher smelled of soap. She led Topaz to a
chair made of real wood. On Nerol, such a chair would be in a museum, and there
would be a shield around it so people couldn't touch the wood or breathe on it
too much. Topaz knew wood when she saw it because her father had a small wood
box that he ran his fingers over when he was troubled by something. The wood of
the box was called maple, and it was soft and warm in a way that no plastic
could be. All the chairs in the room were wood, but they were not smooth and
clean like the maple box, they were beaten up and dirty. They had dents. She
thought: I'll never get used to it here.

The teacher said to Topaz, I'm Ms. C. Then she said to the class, Topaz is from
Nerol. She was born here, but she went to Nerol with her parents when she was
two, and now she's come back. Isn't that interesting.? I'm sure she has
fascinating things to tell us. How many of you have been on another planet? Only
three hands went up.

Ms. C. turned and told Topaz's mother, Don't worry, she'll be all right. Bye
dear, Topaz's mother said to Topaz, waving, see you later, and she left. Topaz
could hear her mother's shoes clicking farther and farther away down the long
hall.

She was given a notebook that had a screen cloudy from a lot of tiny scratches.
One of the keys wobbled but worked okay if you hit it in the center and not too
hard. The notebook was awfully slow and didn't have a lot of memory. This was
not a very good school, even with the chairs of real wood. But her father had
explained to her, in his serious voice, that good schools on Earth were too
expensive for their family budget. In the Franklin Child Center, at least, you
got to go to an actual physical classroom and learn social skills. Learning
social skills at home-by software, her father said, was ridiculous, like
learning to swim without getting in the water.