"John Varley - Blue Champagne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

file:///G|/rah/John%20Varley%20-%20Blue%20Champagne.htm (5 of 255) [2/17/2004 10:34:56 AM]
Blue Champagne


The promise of a story was not enough to keep her out of the water. He didn't know if that was good
or bad. He knew she was smart, a reader, and she had an imagination. But she was also active. That
pull was too strong for him. He sat far from the water, under some bushes, and watched her swim
with the three other children still in the park this late in the evening.

Maybe she would come back to him, and maybe she wouldn't. It wouldn't change his life either way,
but it might change hers.

She emerged dripping and infinitely cleaner from the murky water. She dressed again in her random
scraps, for whatever good it did her, and came to him, shivering.

"I'm cold," she said.

"Here." He took off his jacket. She looked at his hands as he wrapped it around her, and she reached
out and touched the hardness of his shoulder.

"You sure must be strong," she commented.

"Pretty strong. I work hard, being a pusher."

"Just what is a pusher?" she said, and stifled a yawn.

"Come sit on my lap, and I'll tell you."



He did tell her, and it was a very good story that no adventurous child could resist. He had practiced
that story, refined it, told it many times into a recorder until he had the rhythms and cadences just
right, until he found just the right words—not too difficult words, but words with some fire and juice
in them.

And once more he grew encouraged. She had been tired when he started, but he gradually caught her
attention. It was possible no one had ever told her a story in quite that way. She was used to sitting
before the screen and having a story shoved into her eyes and ears. It was something new to be able
to interrupt with questions and get answers. Even reading was not like that. It was the oral tradition
of storytelling, and it could still mesmerize the nth generation of the electronic age.

"That sounds great," she said, when she was sure he was through.

"You liked it?"

"I really truly did. I think I want to be a pusher when I grow up. That was a really neat story."

"Well, that's not actually the story I was going to tell you. That's just what it's like to be a pusher."

"You mean you have another story?"