"Nancy Kress - By Fools Like Me" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

walls don’t keep out the heat. But that’s my fault. I close the window shutters
only when I absolutely have to. Insects and heat are preferable to dark. But
I have a door, made of precious and rotting wood, which is more than Hope
or her parents have on their sleeping alcoves off the house’s only other
room. I expect to die in this room.

Hope returns, carrying a bubble of sleek white plastic that fills her
bare arms. The bubble has no seams. No mold sticks to it, no sand.
Carefully she lays the thing on my cot.

Despite myself, I say, “Bring me the big knife and be very careful, it’s
sharp.”

She gets the knife, carrying it as gingerly as an offering for the altar.
The plastic slits more readily than I expected. I peel it back, and we both
gasp.

I am the oldest person on Island by two decades, and I have seen
much. Not of the world my father told me about, from before the Crash, but
in our world now. I have buried two husbands and five children, survived
three great sandstorms and two years where the rains didn’t come at all,
planted and first-nursed a sacred tree, served six times at the altar. I have
seen much, but I have never seen so much preserved sin in one place.

“What ... Grandma ... what is that?”

“A book, child. They’re all books.”

“Books?” Her voice holds titillated horror. “You mean ... like they
made before the Crash? Like they cut down trees to make?”

“Yes.”

“Trees? Real trees?”

“Yes.” I lift the top one from the white plastic bubble. Firm thick red
cover, like ... dear God, it’s made from the skin of some animal. My gorge
rises. Hope mustn’t know that. The edges of the sin are gold. My father told
me about books, but not that they could look like this. I open it.

“Oh!” Hope cried. “Oh, Grandma!”

The first slate—no, first page, the word floating up from some
childhood conversation—is a picture of trees, but nothing like the pictures
children draw on their slates. This picture shows dozens of richly colored
trees, crowded together, each with hundreds of healthy, beautifully detailed
green leaves. The trees shade a path bordered with glorious flowers. Along
the path runs a child wearing far too many wraps, following a large white
animal dressed in a wrap and hat and carrying a small metal machine. At the
top of the picture, words float on golden clouds: Alice in Wonderland.