"Michael Swanwick - The Edge of the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

could help him.

Russ walked like an automaton, wordlessly, tirelessly, never hurrying up or slowing down. Donna
followed in concerned silence, while Piggy scurried between them, chattering like somebody's pet
Pekingese. This struck Donna as so apt as to be almost allegorical: the two of them together yet alone,
the distance between filled with noise. She thought of this distance, this silence, as the sun passed behind
the cliff and the afternoon heat lost its edge.
The stairs changed to cement-jacketed brick with small buttresses cut into the rock. There was a
pile of stems and cherry pits on one landing, and the railing above them was white with bird droppings.
Piggy leaned over the rail and said, "Hey, I can see seagulls down there. Flying around."
"Where?" Russ leaned over the railing, then said scornfully, "Those are pigeons. The Ghazoddis
used to release them for rifle practice."
As Piggy turned to follow Russ down again, Donna caught a glimpse into his eyes, liquid and
trembling with helplessness and despair. She'd seen that fear in him only once before, months ago when
she'd stopped by his house on the way to school, just after the Emir's assassination.

The living-room windows were draped and the room seemed unnaturally gloomy after being out in
the morning sun. Blue television light flickered over shelves of shadowy ceramic figurines: Dresden
milkmaids, Chantilly Chinamen, Meissen pug-dogs connected by a gold chain held in their champed
jaws, naked Delft nymphs dancing.
Piggy's mother sat in a limp dressing gown, hair unbrushed, watching the funeral. She held a cup of
oily-looking coffee in one hand. Donna was surprised to see her up so early. Everyone said that she had
a bad problem with alcohol, that even by service wife standards she was out of control.
"Look at them," Piggy's mother said. On the screen were solemn processions of camels and
Cadillacs, sheikhs in jellaba, keffigeh and mirrorshades, European dignitaries with wives in tasteful gray
Parisian fashions. "They've got their nerve."
"Where did you put my lunch?" Piggy said loudly from the kitchen.
"Making fun of the Kennedys like that!" The Emir's youngest son, no more than four years old,
salaamed his father's casket as it passed before him. "That kid's bad enough, but you should see the
mother, crying as if her heart were broken. It's enough to turn your stomach. If I were Jackie, I'd—"
Donna and Piggy and Russ had gone bowling the night the Emir was shot. This was out in the ruck
of cheap joints that surrounded the base, catering almost exclusively to servicemen. When the Muzak
piped through overhead speakers was interrupted for the news bulletin, everyone had stood up and
cheered. Up we go, someone had begun singing, and the rest had joined in, into the wild blue yonder
… Donna had felt so sick with fear and disgust she had thrown up in the parking lot. "I don't think they're
making fun of anyone," Donna said. "They're just—"
"Don't talk to her!" The refrigerator door slammed shut. A cupboard door slammed open.
Piggy's mother smiled bitterly. "This is exactly what you'd expect from these ragheads. Pretending
they're white people, deliberately mocking their betters. Filthy brown animals."
"Mother! Where is my fucking lunch?"
She looked at him then, jaw tightening. "Don't you use that kind of language on me, young man."
"All right!" Piggy shouted. "All right, I'm going to school without lunch! Shows how much you care!"
He turned to Donna and in the instant before he grabbed her wrist and dragged her out of the
house, Donna could no longer hear the words, could only see that universe of baffled futility haunting
Piggy's eyes. That same look she glimpsed today.

The railings were wooden now, half the posts rotting at their bases, with an occasional plank
missing, wrenched off and thrown over the side by previous visitors. Donna's knees buckled and she
stumbled, almost lurching into the rock. "I have to stop," she said, hating herself for it. "I cannot go one
more step."