"Judith Merril - Dead Center" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

lived: this, here . . . and the perfect mathematic bleakness of the metal beast that would be his home in
three days' time.
He squeezed his wife's hand, and she turned and looked at him, and there was no doubt a man could
have about what the world held in store.

When they had all gone, Jock walked down the hall and picked up the little boy asleep on the floor,
and put him back into his bed. Toby woke up long enough to grab his father's hand and ask earnestly,
out of the point in the conversation where sleep had overcome him:
"Daddy, if the universe hasn't got any ends to it, how can you tell where you are?"
"Me?" Jock asked. "I'm right next to the middle of it."
"How do you know?"
His father tapped him lightly on the chest.
"Because that's where the middle is." Jock smiled and stood up. "Go to sleep, champ. Good night."
And Toby slept, while the universe revolved in all its mystery about the small center Jock Kruger had
assigned to it.

"Scared?" she asked, much later, in the spaceless silence of their bedroom.
He had to think about it before he could answer. "I guess not. I guess I think I ought to be, but I'm
not. I don't think I'd do it at all if I wasn't sure." He was almost asleep, when the thought hit him, and he
jerked awake and saw she was sure enough lying wide-eyed and sleepless beside him. "Baby!" he said,
and it was almost an accusation. "Baby, you're not scared, are you?"
"Not if you're not," she said. But they never could lie to each other.

II

Toby sat on the platform, next to his grandmother. They were in the second row, right in back of his
mother and father, so it was all right for him to wriggle a little bit, or whisper. They couldn't hear much of
the speeches back there, and what they did hear mostly didn't make sense to Toby. But every now and
then Grandma would grab his hand tight all of a sudden, and he understood what the whole thing was
about: it was because Daddy was going away again.
His Grandma's hand was very white, with little red and tan dots in it, and big blue veins that stood out
higher than the wrinkles in her skin, whenever she grabbed at his hand. Later, walking over to the
towering skyscraping rocket, he held his mother's hand; it was smooth and cool and tan, all one color,
and she didn't grasp at him the way Grandma did. Later still, his father's two hands, picking him up to
kiss, were bigger and darker tan than his mother's, not so smooth, and the fingers were stronger, but so
strong it hurt sometimes.
They took him up in an elevator, and showed him all around the inside of the rocket, where Daddy
would sit, and where all the food was stored, for emergency, they said, and the radio and everything.
Then it was time to say goodbye.
Daddy was laughing at first, and Toby tried to laugh, too, but he didn't really want Daddy to go
away. Daddy kissed him, and he felt like crying because it was scratchy against Daddy's cheek, and the
strong fingers were hurting him now. Then Daddy stopped laughing and looked at him very seriously.
"You take care of your mother, now," Daddy told him. "You're a big boy this time."
"Okay," Toby said. Last time Daddy went away in a rocket, he was not-quite-four, and they teased
him with the poem in the book that said, James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George
Dupree, Took great care of his mother, though he was only three. . . . So Toby didn't much like
Daddy saying that now, because he knew they didn't really mean it.
"Okay," he said, and then because he was angry, he said, "Only she's supposed to take care of me,
isn't she?"
Daddy and Mommy both laughed, and so did the two men who were standing there waiting for