"Robert F. Young - Earthscape" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

now, they tell me, they're married and have kids. I tell them they can take their wives and kids with them,
and they look at me as though I am out of my mind.
Pat is behind the bar. Tonight she has red hair. I marvel at how young she looks when her eyes tell
me she is my age. She is like a girl just graduated from high school. I remark on the color of her hair, and
she says, smiling, that no one knows which of her hairdos is really her own hair. I marvel at her smile. It is
warm and confidential, as though we have known each other for years.
I buy her a drink and she buys one back. "I'm helping my father paint the house," I tell her.
"You're right back in the groove."
"How in hell did you get far enough outside this damned deal to see what makes its wheels turn?"
"You don't have to get outside it to see."
"I had to."
She laughs. "The view from Mars. And here it was, all the time, in your own backyard."
She waits on another customer and comes back. There is no coldness in me when I look at her.
"What does Earth look like from far away?" she asks.
"It's a pretty blue star. What made you decide to take your clothes off for a living?"
"It gave me a charge."
"Nympho-exhibitionism?"
"I don't think so."
"Why did you stop?"
"I got married to a man who thought Christ was due back any day. He didn't want Christ to see me
naked. It didn't work."
"You can start up again."
"I'm too old and fat."
"The moon is made of green cheese."
"I guess I don't want to start again. I go from town to town now, like I did before. Only now I only
tend bar."
"On Mars when I got up mornings and went outside the first thing I'd see would be Olympus Mons."
"Tell me about it."
"It's like the state of Utah turned into a fifteen-mile high mountain. I thought I wanted to be free from
it. Now, I don't know." "You're free from it whether you want to be or not."
"Yes. I guess I am. I have to leave now. I have to get up early to paint the back porch."

Judy calls on her next day off. She and the kids are going on a picnic. Carl and Kevin asked her to
ask me if maybe I might like to come along. My father and I have the paint job beat by this time. I tell her
okay.
She picks me up in her stationwagon. I can barely fit into it what with her and the three kids and the
picnic basket. There is a state park five miles from town. Barbecues, picnic tables, bathhouses. The kids
are ecstatic. They run around me, begging me to take them swimming. Especially Suzan, the little girl. I
get into my suit and they get into theirs, Suzan with Judy's help, and I take them down to the beach while
Judy gets one of the barbecues ready for grilling synthi-hot dogs and soy-bean burgers. Supervising the
kids' activities gives me a proprietary air that I do not find altogether distasteful. I watch the little girl
carefully. She squats in water half a foot deep and splashes delightedly. Carl and Kevin go out as far as
they dare, to impress me. I tell them to swim closer to shore.
We eat at one of the picnic tables. It is a weekday, and we have the area pretty much to ourselves. It
strikes me that Judy does not have a dog. "We had one," she tells me when I ask, "but it got run over.
We're going to get another."
The kids grow sad at the mention of the dog. Spike, his name was. "We're getting an Irish setter this
time," Judy says. "Although they cost an arm and a leg."
She has brought beer too. We sip it from biodegradable cans while the two boys play catch and
Suzan fingers arabesques in the sand. I ask Judy, "Didn't you bring your suit?"