"LeGuin-Olders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

As a physician, he asked her of her pregnancy. She was well, all was well. He
ordered her to walk daily, to be two hours out of the sickroom in the open air.
He wished he might go with her, for he liked her and it would have been a
pleasure to walk beside her, watching her go along tall and lithe and robust.
But if she was to leave Farre's side for two hours, he was to replace her there:
that was simply understood. He obeyed her implicit orders as she obeyed his
explicit ones.

His own freedom was considerable, for she spent most of the day in the sickroom,
and there was no use his being there, too, little use his being there at all; in
fact: Farre needed nothing from him or her or anyone, aside from the little
nourishment he took. Twice a day, with infinite patience, she contrived to feed
him ten or a dozen sips of Dr. Saker's rich brew of meat and herbs and
medicines, which Hamid concocted and strained daily in the kitchen with the
cooks' interested aid. Aside from those two half hours, and once a day the
bed-jar for a few drops of urine, there was nothing to be done. No chafing or
sores developed on Farre's skin. He lay unmoving, showing no discomfort. His
eyes never opened. Once or twice, she said, in the night, he had moved a little,
shuddered. Hamid had not seen him make any movement for days.

Surely, if there was any truth in the old book Dr. Saker had shown him and in
Pask's unwilling and enigmatic hints of confirmation, Makali would know? But she
said never a word, and it was too late now for him to ask. He had lost his
chance. And if he could not speak to her, he would not go behind her back,
asking the others if there was any truth in this tale.

Of course there isn't, he told his conscience. A myth, a rumor, a folktale of
the 'Old Islanders'. . . and the word of an ignorant man, a saddler. . . .
Superstition! What do I see when I look at my patient? A deep coma. A deep,
restorative coma. Unusual, yes, but not abnormal, not uncanny. Perhaps such a
coma, a very long vegetative period of recovery, common to these islanders, an
inbred people, would be the origin of the myth, much exaggerated, made fanciful.
. . .

They were a healthy lot, and though he offered his services he had little to do
once he had reset a boy's badly splinted arm and scraped out an old fellow's leg
abscesses. Sometimes little Idi tagged after him. Clearly she adored her father
and missed his company. She never asked, "Will he get well," but Hamid had seen
her crouched at the bedside, quite still, her cheek against Farre's unresponding
hand. Touched by the child's dignity, Hamid asked her what games she and her
father had played. She thought a long time before she said, "He would tell me
what he was doing and sometimes I could help." Evidently she had simply followed
Farre in his daily round of farmwork and management. Hamid provided only an
unsatisfactory, frivolous substitute. She would listen to his tales of the court
and city for a while, not very interested, and soon would run off to her own
small, serious duties. Hamid grew restive under the burden of being useless.

He found walking soothed him, and went almost daily on a favorite circuit: down
to the quay and along the dunes to the southeast end of the island, from which
he first saw the open sea, free at last of the whispering green levels of the