"Kim Stanley Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

adequate, and we can get to work making them even better. Joe will be my target
audience. You’d like to play all day with a bunch of kids, wouldn’t you Joe?”
“Yeah Phil,” Joe said, happy to be included in the conversation.
“We’ll set up whatever system works best for you, what do you think of that?”
“I like that,” Joe said.
Charlie started to mutter something about the Chinese women who buried their
infants up to the neck in riverbank mud every day to leave them to go to work in the
rice paddies, but Phil overrode him.
“Gymboree in the basement, if that’s what it takes! Laser tag, paintball wars—you
name it! You’d like paintball wars, wouldn’t you Joe?”
“Big truck,” Joe observed, pointing at the traffic on Independence Avenue.
“Sure, we could have big trucks too. We could have a monster truck pull right on
the White House lawn.”
“Monster truck.” Joe smiled at the phrase.
Charlie sighed. It really seemed to him that Joe should be shouting big trucks right
now, or trying to escape and crawling around among the turning pedals underfoot,
or leaping overboard to go for a swim. Instead he was listening peacefully to Phil’s
banter, with an expression that said he understood just as much as he wanted to, and
approved of it in full.
Ah well. Everyone changed. And in fact, that had been the whole point of the
ceremony Charlie had asked the Khembalis to conduct! Charlie had requested
it—had insisted on it, in fact! But without, he now realized, fully imagining the
consequences.
Phil said, “So you’ll do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You more or less have to, right? I mean, you’re the one who first suggested that I
run, when we were over at Lincoln.”
“Everyone was telling you that.”
“No they weren’t. Besides, you were first.”
“No, you were. I just thought it would work.”
“And you were right, right?”
“Apparently so.”
“So you owe me. You got me into this mess.”
Phil smiled, waved at some tourists as he made a broad champing turn back toward
the other side of the Basin. Charlie sighed. If he agreed, he would not see Joe
anywhere near as much as he was used to—an idea he hated. On the other hand, if
he didn’t see him as much, he wouldn’t notice so often how much Joe had changed.
And he hated that change.
So much to dislike! Unhappily he said, “I’ll have to talk to Anna about it first. But I
think she’ll go for it. She’s pretty pro-work. So. Shit. I’ll give it a try. I’ll give it a
few months, and see how it goes. By that time your task force should be on their
way, and I can see where things stand and go emeritus if I need to.”
“Good.” And Phil pedaled furiously, almost throwing Charlie’s knees up into his
chin with the force of his enthusiasm. He said, “Look, Joe, all the people are waving
at you!”
Joe waved back. “Hi people!” he shouted. “Big truck, right there! Look! I like that
big truck. That’s a good truck.”