"Nancy Kress - Maximum Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Rebecca notices—she notices everything, she runs a very good class—and yells at me. "Cameron! Stay in
place!"
I am in my place. I am happy.
"Would you like to go for a walk?" I say to Rob, after class. He has slung a towel around his neck, the
same blue as his eyes. Sweat mats his hair and darkens his practice clothes. He nods, smiling.
We clatter down the back stairs and out into the garden of Aldani House. The area inside its nine-foot
foamcast wall is about four acres. I don't know how I know this. The main building sits close to the front
gate, which is just as solid and high and opaque as the wall. Between the House and the gate bloom the
front gardens; off to one side are a security building for Yong and the maintenance sheds. Behind the
House are a stretch of lawn with plastic tables and chairs and a volleyball net, then the vegetable garden
where the School's small pupils are sent to work when they misbehave, and then a little wood with paths
and benches and thickly leaved trees. Rob and I walk there. The air is cool on my warmed muscles, and the
air smells of pine needles and cherry blossoms and strawberries.
"You have a beautiful porte de bras in your arabesques," I say. "Much more expressive than mine. I
was watching you in the mirror."
"But you can jump," Rob says. It's true. I have the strongest and most precise jumps in the company.
We stroll through the wood until we come to a clearing beside the wall. Against the foamcast, which is
made to look like rough stone, stands an unpainted wooden bench. Without talking about it, Rob and I sit.
I reach down and pluck a wild strawberry. It tastes warm from the sun, sweet and juicy. Rob looks at
me oddly.
"What?" I say.
"Nothing." He gazes away. But I guess what his look means: You didn't use to like strawberries. I'm
getting used to this look. Apparently many of my tastes were different before the operation. Then, people
tell me, I never wore purple; now I love it. Then I listened every day to Ragliev; now I refer the classical
composers, especially Schubert. Then I wore rings and bracelets and vest pins; now a pile of jewelry sits
gathering dust on my messy dresser top.
The silence stretches out. To break it, Rob says, "Look at that poor bird." It's a sparrow, hopping on the
ground on its one foot. There's also something wrong with the shape of its wings. I remember that there are
a lot of deformed birds.
The bird flies awkwardly away. I eat another strawberry. More silence. Rob and I don't look at each
other. When I can't stand it anymore, I put one hand on the rough wall. "What's on the other side?"
He turns to blink at me. "You don't remember the city?" I shake my head, smiling at him. His eyes are
so blue. "Not anything about this particular neighborhood?" "No," I say, and for the first time, I realize that
of course Rob knows what happened to me to send me to the memory doctors. Everyone in Aldani House
must know; only something terrible enough to be general knowledge would justify the operation. Why
haven't I realized this before? I draw away from Rob, confused and suddenly ashamed. These people don't
just remember me with different tastes; they possess crucial pieces of my life that I don't have.
Rob blurts, "Don't push me away, Cam! Not again! When you smiled at me in class this morning, I
thought, I hoped . . . don't push me away again!"
Again. The word makes me uneasy; he knows so much about me. Rob sees my reaction and puts his
hand on my arm. "I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to do that. Don't worry, none of us will ever talk to you about
what happened to you . . . before. Nobody, ever. Mr. C. and Melita were both very clear about that. And
we love you, Cam, you must feel that. I. . . love you."
I say, despite my uneasiness, "Were we lovers? Before?"
He doesn't answer. I think again about the one part of me that feels somehow different since I've
returned . . . although I don't even know what I mean by "different." Just different in my hand when I
shower, or masturbate. But everything still functions just fine, so what difference could any difference
really make?
I repeat, "Were we lovers? Before?"
"Yes," Rob whispers. And then, "But this is now. I know that. Melita warned me that . . . This is now,