"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Questing Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

"Now, now, Mr. Brasher, we mustn't hurt ourselves."

He wonders how he can hurt himself in this house he has built -- he saw the
documentation in the photo album: his younger self standing over the blueprints,
holding a hammer, speaking to a contractor. He chose the big brass feather bed,
the ruby bedspread with matching carpet and curtains that set off the mahogany
paneling. It is soothing to sleep in this room with his books and posters lining
the walls, this place he has been for fifty years. It is like living in his own
mind.

This morning he woke with the thought that the longer he remains passive, the
sooner the thief will take his entire being. Until his daughter made her casual
remark, he was willing to let his brain slip away drop by drop. But she was
wrong. Age should equal wisdom, and somewhere, someone is stealing his wisdom
from him. He cannot allow this to continue.

He needs a plan. A simple plan to prevent the destruction of his mind. A plan
that will save the little bit he has left.

He reads until he dozes off. Each word is an effort, each sentence a battle he
must fight to the end. He reads only two pages before his head lolls against the
pillows. When he awakes, the side of his mouth is wet. He drools in his sleep,
like an old man. He hates thinking of himself as old.

He has spoken to the nurses. They pat his arm, and refuse to answer him until he
gets agitated. They say different doctors have different opinions, but no one
will tell him what those opinions are.

He investigates various diseases on his own. But, as he reads, and sleeps, and
reads some more, he realizes his symptoms are not neatly categorized. He can
learn and remember from day to day if he tries. The information he has lost all
seems to fit into part of the same whole.

He cannot remember his work, although he can remember setting pen to paper. But
he does not try to write. That drive left him first, as if fleeing from a crisis
about to happen.

It takes half a day before he realizes that detail is a memory. He can pinpoint
the day he lost his will to create, pinpoint it without anyone else's help.

He was sitting downstairs in the solarium he built for Olive. She had been dead
a year, and in that time, he discovered that the only way he could feel close to
her was to sit in that overheated room she loved. He had to hire someone to tend
her plants, and even then they didn't look right. But the light coming through
the window, that was right and always would be, and he knew if he turned his
head just one certain way that he would see her again, that she hid in the
periphery of his vision like a car in his blind spot. He knew he should write
about the loss as he had written about everything else in his life, record it
for some future even he couldn't fathom, but for the first time since he knew
the alphabet he didn't want to make a record.