"Richard Powers - The Gold Bug Variations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Powers Richard)

Everything that ever summered forth
starts
in identical springs, or four-note var-
iations on that repeated theme: four
seasons,
four winds, four corners, four-chambered
heart

in four desire-trapped bodies in the thick
of a species-swarmed world where green
thrills
to countless change while the calendar
holds still.
Winter works again, through autumn's
politics,

its call to action, critical count of votes:
Look, speak, add to the variants (what
could
be simpler?) now beyond control. How
can we help
but hitch our all to these mere four
notes?



I

The Care and Feeding of Foreigners

Word came today: four lines squeezed on
a three-by-five. After months of bracing for
the worst, I am to read it casually, jot down
the closing date. The trial run is over, Dr.
Ressler dead, his molecule broken up for
parts, leaving no copies. I can neither
destroy the note nor keep from rereading it.
The news is a few days cold. I've had a year's
advance warning. But I haven't time enough
left in my own cells ever to figure it. The
mechanical music box, his body, has had its
last crack at the staff. Those four notes, four
winds, four corners of a world perfect for
getting lost in are lost in a sample mean.
Once, when he talked, I could almost
follow in him the interior melody from the
day of creation. For a few months, I'd had
that tune by ear. Now nothing. Noise. I read
the note all evening, waiting for the clause
that will make sense of it. The only volunteer