"Kate Wilhelm - The Girl Who Fell into the Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

The Girl Who Fell Into
The Sky
by Kate Wilhelm
This well-known and highly respected author’s last
tale in IASFM, “The Gorgon Field” (August 1985). was a
Nebula award finalist. That story evoked a powerfully
haunting feeling for the land. “The Girl Who Fell into the
Sky” takes place in another part of the country—on the
Great Plains of the Midwest—but that same magnificent
sense of awe is also integral to listening. Ms, Wilhelm’s
most recent science fiction novel, Huysman’s Pets, was
published by Bluejay Books last January, and they will
be bringing forth a mystery novel, The Hamlet Trap, next
February.


His father was a MacLaren, his mother a MacDaniel, and for
forty years John had been the one thrust between them when they
fought. Today they stood glaring at each other, through him,
around him, his mother with her flashing green eyes and red hair
that she now dyed (exactly the same color it always had been), his
father with his massive face set in a scowl, thick white eyebrows
drawn close together over his long nose.
“I’ll take an axe to the wheels first!” she said in a low, mean
voice.
“Since when do I let you tell me what I can or can’t do?”
“Knock it off, both of you!” John MacLaren yelled. “For God’s
sake! It’s a hundred and five! You’ll both have heart attacks!”
“No one asked you to butt in, either,” his father snapped, not
shifting his glare from his wife.
She tilted her head higher and turned, marched from the room. “I
asked him,” she called back. “Johnny, you want a gin and tonic?”
“Please,” he said quietly. “Dad, what the hell is it all about?”
The room was green and white, cool, with many growing plants,
everything neat and well cared for. The entire house was like this,
furnished in good pieces, each one an investment: Hepplewhite
chests, Duncan Phyfe chairs, pieces over two hundred years old
that had come from Scotland, or France, or England. David
MacLaren was the collector; Mary accepted it, even encouraged it
sometimes, but she would not walk across the street to add to the
assortment that had accumulated over the forty-five years they had
been married.
Now that the argument had been stopped by Mary’s departure,
David MacLaren smiled at his son, waved toward a wicker
arrangement near a window and led the way to it. He seated
himself with a soft grunt, then waited until John was seated
opposite him.
“Made the mistake of telling her I plan to take a spin over to the
Castleman house tomorrow, pick up that player piano and bring it
home. You know, I told you about it, first one to cross the