"Remnant Population" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

First printing, May 1996
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moon, Elizabeth.
Remnant population / Elizabeth Moon.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-671-87718-6
I. Title
PS3563.0557R46 1996 813'.54--dc20 95-53232
CIP
Typeset by Windhaven Press: Editorial Services, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America



DEDICATION
To Betsy, who provided the spark, and Mary, Ellen, and Carrie who responded with
warmth and light.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book had a number of godmothers, both old and new. Its literary antecedents
include an essay by LeGuin, The Wall, by Marlen Haushofer, and a book I had not
yet read (but heard about) when I began it, Two Old Women, by Velma Wallis, and
those folktales in which wise old women know something worth learning. But it
could not have been written without the living experience of women much like
Ofelia, from whom I learned much less than I should have. They are too many to
name, but they should not be forgotten. Lois Parker helped in revision,
especially her willingness to share her own experience of a long life.



CHAPTER ONE
Contents - Next
Sims Bancorp Colony, File #3245.
Between her toes the damp earth felt cool, but already sweat crept between the
roots of her hair. It would be hotter today than yesterday, and by noon the
lovely spice-scented red flowers of the dayvine would have furled their fragile
cups, and drooped on the vine. Ofelia pushed the mulch deeper against the stems
of the tomatoes with her foot. She liked the heat. If her daughter-in-law Rosara
weren't within sight, she would take off her hat and let the sweat evaporate.
But Rosara worried about cancer from the sun, and Rosara was sure it wasn't
decent for an old woman to be outside with nothing on her head but thinning gray
hair.
Not that it was so thin. Ofelia touched her temples, as if to tuck an errant
strand in place, but really to confirm the thick strands of the braid she wore.
Still thick, and her legs still strong, and her hands, though knotted with age