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

Star Mother
That night her son was the first star.
She stood motionless in the garden, one hand pressed against her heart, watching him rise above the
fields where he had played as a boy, where he had worked as a young man; and she wondered whether
he was thinking of those fields now, whether he was thinking of her standing alone in the April night with
her memories; whether he was thinking of the verandahed house behind her, with its empty rooms and
silent halls, that once upon a time had been his birthplace.
Higher still and higher he rose in the southern sky, and then, when he had reached his zenith, he
dropped swiftly down past the dark edge of the Earth and disappeared from sight. A boy grown up too
soon, riding round and round the world on a celestial carousel, encased in an airtight metal capsule in an
airtight metal chariot ...
Why don't they leave the stars alone? she thought. Why don't they leave the stars to God?
The general's second telegram came early the next morning: Explorer XII doing splendidly. Expect
to bring your son down sometime tomorrow.
She went about her work as usual, collecting the eggs and allocating them in their cardboard boxes,
then setting off in the station wagon on her Tuesday morning run. She had expected a deluge of questions
from her customers. She was not disappointed. "Is Terry really way up there all alone, Martha?" "Aren't
you scared, Martha?" "I do hope they can get him back down all right, Martha." She supposed it must
have given them quite a turn to have their egg woman change into a star mother overnight.
She hadn't expected the TV interview, though, and she would have avoided it if it had been politely
possible. But what could she do when the line of cars and trucks pulled into the drive and the technicians
got out and started setting up their equipment in the backyard? What could she say when the suave
young man came up to her and said, "We want you to know that we're all very proud of your boy up
there, ma'am, and we hope you'll do us the honor of answering a few questions."
Most of the questions concerned Terry, as was fitting. From the way the suave young man asked
them, though, she got the impression that he was trying to prove that her son was just like any other
average American boy, and such just didn't happen to be the case. But whenever she opened her mouth
to mention, say, how he used to study till all hours of the night, or how difficult it had been for him to
make friends because of his shyness, or the fact that he had never gone out for football—whenever she
started to mention any of these things, the suave young man was in great haste to interrupt her and to
twist her words, by requestioning, into a different meaning altogether, till Terry's behavior pattern seemed
to coincide with the behavior pattern which the suave young man apparently considered the norm, but
which, if followed, Martha was sure, would produce not young men bent on exploring space but young
men bent on exploring trivia.
A few of the questions concerned herself: Was Terry her only child? ("Yes.") What had happened to
her husband? ("He was killed in the Korean War.") What did she think of the new law granting star
mothers top priority on any and all information relating to their sons? ("I think it's a fine law ... It's too bad
they couldn't have shown similar humanity toward the war mothers of World War II.")
It was late in the afternoon by the time the TV crew got everything repacked into their cars and
trucks and made their departure. Martha fixed herself a light supper, then donned an old suede jacket of
Terry's and went out into the garden to wait for the sun to go down. According to the time table the
general had outlined in his first telegram, Terry's first Tuesday night passage wasn't due to occur till 9:05.
But it, seemed only right that she should be outside when the stars started to come out. Presently they
did, and she watched them wink on, one by one, in the deepening darkness of the sky. She'd never been
much of a one for the stars; most of her life she'd been much too busy on Earth to bother with things
celestial. She could remember, when she was much younger and Bill was courting her, looking up at the
moon sometimes; and once in a while, when a star fell, making a wish. But this was different. It was
different because now she had a personal interest in the sky, a new affinity with its myriad inhabitants.
 And how bright they became when you kept looking at them! They seemed to come alive, almost,
pulsing brilliantly down out of the blackness of the night ... And they were different colors, too, she