"Kathe Koja - Fireflies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koja Kathe)

visible and dark matter, two-thirds vacuum energy.

He flicked away an insect, a mosquito, some tiny night-borne pest. I thought nature abhors a vacuum?
This kind keeps the universe expanding, she said. It resists the gravitational pull of the galaxies, and so--

And what?

She said nothing.

What's--hey, are you okay? Are you--

She did not answer; he looked into her face, peered through the darkness then at once looked away, his
own mouth twisting down one-sided, like a stroke victim's, its curve the felt echo of her pain and You
wan' go in? he asked, voice soft with alarm, his accent more pronounced. You wan' lie down, or--

No, harsh, fighting it, fighting herself; the hand with the cigarette trembled, its light like a firefly trapped in
a jar until The doctor, he said at last, when she had finally calmed. He called me.... I'm still the emergency
contact, you know?

She did not answer.

He said--

I know what he said. She took a last drag on the cigarette, let it drop and roll down the porch steps to
the grass, dying red in a sea of silent green. We had a nice long talk.

There are things you can do. There are still things that you--

I'm not doing anything, she said. While you were in Cairo I was doing things, and what the fuck good
did any of them do me? I'm sick of all that. She reached for the pack of cigarettes, but her grasp was
unsteady and in her lurching motion her right side, right arm struck the black iron rail and she cried out, a
brief excruciating cry; and he moaned, low and helpless, a noise unwilled as he tried to right her but No,
she said through her teeth, no don't touch me, don't.

Silence: night sounds: when her gaze had cleared she saw that he was weeping and Don't, she said,
unsteady, and put her left hand on his arm, just above the elbow, the way she always had. It's okay, it's
all right--but still he wept, face up toward the night, the wet fierce glottals of a child until Don't make it
worse, she said, to make him stop and he did, slowly, sucking in his breath and Get us another beer, she
said, to help him.

When he had gone into the house again she laboriously lit another cigarette, sat smoking in the faint noises
from inside: water running, the glass clink of bottles. The fireflies were back, as if her pain and his had
scattered them like the shadow of some dark beast, but now in the beast's departure they were free
again, to play, to go about their amatory errands and It's the males who light up, he said, back on the
porch stoop, handing her a fresh beer. They do it for the girls? To get them to notice?

It must work, she said, or there wouldn't be fireflies.

Wonder if it's the same up there? pointing with his own beer into the starlit sky. Light matter and dark
matter, you said? Like blinking on and off?