"Kathe Koja - By the Mirror of My Youth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koja Kathe)

BY THE MIRROR OF MY YOUTH
By Kathe Koja

One of the most exciting new writers to hit the science fiction scene in some time,
Kathe Koja is a frequent contributor to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She has also sold stories to
Pulphouse, Universe, The Ultimate Werewolf, A Whisper of Blood, and elsewhere.
Her first novel, The Cipher, was released to enthusiastic critical response, and a new
novel, Bad Brains, was greeted with similar acclaim. Her third novel, Skin, has just
been published. She has had stories in our Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Annual
Collections. Here, with her usual hard-edged élan, she gives a whole new meaning to
the phrase “technological obsolescence” . . .

****

Raymond’s sweat. Just a bead of it, a proud greasy glitter in the Slavic valley of his
temple, his left temple mind you, the one pointed at her. Of course it would be.
Rachel had passed no day, had in fact lived no moment of her entire adult life
without one of Raymond’s irritations parading itself before her. It was a gift he had.

He shifted, there on the bench, the preciously faux-Shaker bench he insisted
upon inserting in her morning room like a splinter in her living flesh.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked her.

She forbore to answer in words, preferring the quick nod, the quicker rise
from her chair, beat him to the door if she could. She couldn’t. His healthy rise, his
longer reach, his more advantageous proximity to the door, and still he stopped,
paused to hold it for her:

“After you,” he said.

“Why not,” she said. “Once in a lifetime can’t hurt.”

****

Halfway through the long drive, he spoke again, her hands tight and graceful on the
wheel: “Those gloves look shabby,” he said.

“They are shabby.”

“Well, why don’t you get some new ones?”
 “That’s right.” The defroster’s heat blowing back, oven-dry into her face.
“That’s you, isn’t it, Ray? When it wears out, get a new one. Because the old one
doesn’t work anymore. Because the old one’s wearing out.” There were certainly
no tears, she had cried this all out years before, but the anger was as bitter and brisk
as new snow.

His profile, advantageous in the passing arctic shine of the landscape. His
noble brow. “Oh, for God’s sake. Aren’t you ever going to stop feeling sorry for