"James Tiptree Jr. - Timesharing Angel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

Time-Sharing Angel
James Tiptree


It's not true there are no angels; the young woman named Jolyone
Schram spoke to one, with results that have astounded us all.

Whether what Jolyone talked to was actually an angel in the classic
sense, we'll never know, of course; unless it returns, which seems unlikely.
Certainly it was a space-borne Something of great power, a principle of
the outer void, perhaps, a wandering sentience—possibly even, as some
might claim, an interstellar commuter out of his usual way. Whatever it
may have been, it heard Jolyone, and this is the manner of that event.

On the night it happened Jolyone was trying not to cry, while her teeth
played music.

She was at her nightly job of news clipper and general gofer on the fifth
floor of WPNQ's new building. Far up above her head towered WPNQ's
new transmitter, which had just been erected on what had been the last
wooded ridge behind L.A. The new transmitter was powered up to cut
through everything near it on the L.A. bands. It was so strong that while
Jolyone stapled Telex flimsies, the big filling in her right molar clearly
brought in Stevie Smith.

"I was much farther out than you thought, and not waving but
drowning," sang her tooth. Jolyone's eyes blinked tears and her chin
trembled, but it wasn't the song doing it.

The fact is that right there in Hal Hodge's office Jolyone was
passionately mourning the death of Earth, which she had just foreseen.

She was nineteen years old.

The day before she had taken off to drive up the coast and over to the
piney-woods valley where she'd spent a lot of happy time as a kid. Her
semiroommate had just split, semiamiably, and she needed some peace.
She felt she'd been away from earth and woods too long.
 It was dark before she got close, but she couldn't help noticing that
there seemed to be a lot more houses than on her last trip. Finally the
misty trees closed around her headlights, and the road was its bad old self.
By midnight she drove over the ridge and pulled onto the verge. The mist
was so thick she decided to nap till dawn and see the sunrise. All around
was the peaceful smell of woods. A hoot owl called and was answered. As
Jolyone drifted off to sleep, she could just hear the little brook purling
through a cave she used to hide out in when she was little. She smiled,
remembering.

Jolyone never saw the sun rise there.