"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

“All right, don’t rub it in. Because I’m going to be in the same room I’ve been in every night for the past
seven years, more or less.”
“So by now you’re used to it, right?”

“Well, yes. That’s true. It was harder with Nick, when I could remember what freedom was.”

“You have morphed into momhood.”

“Yeah. But morphing hurts, baby, just like inX-Men. I remember the first Mother’s Day after Nick was
born, I was most deep into the shock of it, and Anna had to be away that day, maybe to visit her mom, I
can’t remember, and I was trying to get Nick to take a bottle and he was refusing it as usual. And I
suddenly realized I would never be free again for the whole rest of my life, but that as a non-mom I was
never going to get a day to honormy efforts, because Father’s Day is not what this stuff is about, and
Nick was whipping his head around even though he was in desperate need of a bottle, and I freaked out,
Roy. I freaked out and threw that bottle down.”

“You threw it?”

“Yeah I slung it down and it hit at the wrong angle or something and justexploded. The baggie broke and
the milk shot up and sprayed all over the room. I couldn’t believe one bottle could hold that much. Even
now when I’m cleaning the living room I come across little white dots of dried milk here and there, like
on the mantelpiece or the windowsill. Another little reminder of my Mother’s Day freak-out.”

“Ha. The morph moment. Well Charlie you are indeed a pathetic specimen of American manhood,
yearning for your own Mother’s Day card, but just hang in there—only seventeen more years and you’ll
be free again!”

“Oh fuckyouverymuch! By then I won’t want to be.”

“Even now you don’t wanna be. You love it, you know you do. But listen I gotta go Phil’s here bye.”

“Bye.”



AFTER TALKING with Charlie, Anna got absorbed in work in her usual manner, and might well have
forgotten her lunch date with the people from Khembalung; but because this was a perpetual problem of
hers, she had set her watch alarm for one o’clock, and when it beeped she saved and went downstairs.
She could see through the front window that the new embassy’s staff was still unpacking, releasing visible
clouds of dust or incense smoke into the air. The young monk she had spoken to and his most elderly
companion sat on the floor inspecting a box containing necklaces and the like.

They noticed her and looked up curiously, then the younger one nodded, remembering her from the
morning conversation after their ceremony.

“Still interested in some pizza?” Anna asked. “If pizza is okay?”

“Oh yes,” the young one said. The two men got to their feet, the old man in several distinct moves; one
leg was stiff. “We love pizza.” The old man nodded politely, glancing at his young assistant, who said
something to him rapidly, in a language that while not guttural did seem mostly to be generated at the