Orson Scott Card - St Amy's Tale
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2024-12-22
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ST. AMY'S TALE
By Orson Scott Card
Mother could kill with her hands. Father could fly. These are miracles. But
they were not miracles then. Mother Elouise taught me that there were no
miracles then.
I am the child of Wreckers, born while the angel was in them. This is
why I am called Saint Amy, though I perceive nothing in me that should make me
holier than any other old woman. Yet Mother Elouise denied the angel in her,
too, and it was no less there.
Sift your fingers through the soil, all you who read my words. Take your
spades of iron and your picks of stone. Dig deep. You will find no ancient
works of man hidden there. For the Wreckers passed through the world, and all
the vanity was consumed in fire; all the pride broke in pieces when it was
smitten by God's shining hand.
Elouise leaned on the rim of the computer keyboard. All around her the
machinery was alive, the screens displaying information. Elouise felt nothing
but weariness. She was leaning because, for a moment, she had felt a
frightening vertigo. As if the world underneath the airplane had dissolved and
slipped away into a rapidly receding star and she would never be able to land.
True enough, she thought. I'll never be able to land, not in the world I knew.
"Getting sentimental about the old computers?"
Elouise, startled, turned in her chair and faced her husband, Charlie. At that
moment the airplane lurched, but like sailors accustomed to the shifting of
the sea, they adjusted unconsciously and did not notice the imbalance.
"Is it noon already?" she asked.
"It's the mortal equivalent of noon. I'm too tired to fly this thing anymore,
and it's a good thing Bill's at the controls."
"Hungry?"
Charlie shook his head. "But Amy probably is," he said.
"Voyeur," said Elouise.
Charlie liked to watch Elouise nurse their daughter. But despite her
accusation, Elouise knew there was nothing sexual in it. Charlie liked the
idea of Elouise being Amy's mother. He liked the way Amy's sucking resembled
the sucking of a calf or a lamb or a puppy. He had said, "It's the best thing
we kept from the
animals. The best thing we didn't throw away."
"Better than sex?" Elouise had asked. And Charlie had only smiled.
Amy was playing with a rag doll in the only large clear space in the airplane,
near the exit door. "Mommy Mommy Mamommy Mommyo," Amy said. The child stood
and reached to be picked up. Then she saw Charlie. "Daddy Addy Addy."
"Hi," Charlie said.
"Hi," Amy answered. "Ha-ee." She had only just learned to close the diphthong,
and she exaggerated it. Amy played with the buttons on Elouise's shirt, trying
to undo them.
"Greedy," Elouise said, laughing.
Charlie unbuttoned the shirt for her, and Amy seized on the nipple after only
one false grab. She sucked noisily, tapping her hand gently against Elouise's
breast as she ate.
"I'm glad we're so near finished," Elouise said. "She's too old to be nursing
now."
"That's right. Throw the little bird out of the nest."
"Go to bed," Elouise said.
Amy recognized the phrase. She pulled away. "La-lo," she said.
"That's right. Daddy's going to sleep," Elouise said.
Elouise watched as Charlie stripped off most of his clothing and lay down on
the pad. He smiled once, then turned over, and was immediately asleep. He was
in tune with his body. Elouise knew that he would awaken in exactly six hours,
when it was time for him to take the
controls again.
Amy's sucking was a subtle pleasure now, though it had been agonizing the
first few months, and painful again when Amy's first teeth had come in and she
had learned to her delight that by nipping she could make her mother scream.
But better to nurse her than ever have her eat the predigested pap that was
served as food on the airplane. Elouise thought wryly that it was even worse
than the microwaved veal cordon bleu that they used to inflict on commercial
passengers. Only eight years ago. And they had calibrated their fuel so
exactly that when they took the last draft of fuel from the last of their
storage tanks, the tank registered empty; they would burn the last of the
processed petroleum, instead of putting it back into the earth. All their
caches were gone now, and they would be at the tender mercies of the world
that they themselves had created.
Still, there was work to do; the final work, in the final checks. Elouise held
Amy with one arm while she used her free hand slowly to key in the last
program that her role as commander required her to use. Elouise Private, she
typed. Teacher teacher I declare I see someone's underwear, she typed. On the
screen appeared the warning she had put there: "You may think you're lucky
finding this program, but unless you know the magic words, an alarm is going
to go off all over this airplane and you'll be had. No way out of it, sucker.
Love, Elouise."
Elouise, of course, knew the magic words. Einstein sucks, she typed. The
screen went
blank, and the alarm did not go off.
Malfunction? she queried. "None," answered the computer.
Tamper? she queried, and the computer answered, "None."
Nonreport? she queried, and the computer flashed, "AFscanP7bb55."
Elouise had not really been dozing. But still she was startled, and she
lurched forward, disturbing Amy, who really had fallen asleep. "No no no,"
said Amy, and Elouise forced herself to be patient; she soothed her -daughter
back to sleep before pursuing whatever it was that her guardian program had
caught. Whatever it was? Oh, she knew what it was. It was treachery. The one
thing she had been sure her group, her airplane would never have. Other groups
of Rectifiers-wreckers, they called themselves, having adopted their enemies'
name for them - other groups had had their spies or their faint hearts, but
not Bill or Heather or Ugly-Bugly.
Specify, she typed.
The computer was specific.
Over northern Virginia, as the airplane followed its careful route to find and
destroy everything made of metal, glass, and plastic; somewhere over northern
Virginia, the airplanes path bent slightly to the south, and on the return, at
the same place, the airplane's path bent slightly to the north, so that a
strip of northern Virginia two kilometers long and a few dozen meters wide
could contain some nonbiodegradable artifact, hidden from the airplane, and if
Elouise had not queried this program,
she would never have known it.
But she should have known it. When the plane's course bent, alarms should have
sounded. Someone had penetrated the first line of defense. But Bill could not
have done that, nor could Heather, really-they didn't have the sophistication
to break up a bubble program. Ugly-Bugly?
She knew it wasn't faithful old Ugly-Bugly. No, not her.
The computer voluntarily flashed, "Override M577b, commandmo4, intwis CtTttT."
It was an apology. Someone aboard ship had found the alarm override program
and the overrides for the alarm overrides. Not my fault, the computer was
saying.
Elouise hesitated for a moment. She looked down at her daughter and moved a
curl of red hair away from Amy's eye. Elouise's hand trembled. But she was a
woman of ice, yes, all frozen where compassion made other women warm. She
prided herself on that, on having frozen the last warm places in her-frozen so
goddamn rigid that it was only a moment's hesitation. And then she reached out
and asked for the access code used to perform the treachery, asked for the
name of the traitor.
The computer was even less compassionate than Elouise. It hesitated not at
all.
The computer did not underline; the letters on the screen were no larger than
normal. Yet Elouise felt the words as a shout, and she answered them silently
with a scream.
Charles Evan Hardy, b24ag61-richlandWA.
It was Charlie who was the traitor-Charlie, her sweet, soft, hard-bodied
husband, Charlie who secretly was trying to undo the end of the world.
God has destroyed the world before. Once in a flood, when Noah rode it out in
the Ark. And once the tower of the world's pride was destroyed in the
confusion of tongues. The other times, if there were any other times, those
times are all forgotten.
The world will probably be destroyed again, unless we repent. And don't think
you can hide from the angels. They start out as ordinary people, and you never
know which ones. Suddenly God puts the power of destruction in their hands,
摘要：
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ST.AMY'STALEByOrsonScottCardMothercouldkillwithherhands.Fathercouldfly.Thesearemiracles.Buttheywerenotmiraclesthen.MotherElouisetaughtmethattherewerenomiraclesthen.IamthechildofWreckers,bornwhiletheangelwasinthem.ThisiswhyIamcalledSaintAmy,thoughIperceivenothinginmethatshouldmakemeholierthananyother...
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分类：外语学习
价格：5.9玖币
属性：15 页
大小：36.2KB
格式：PDF
时间：2024-12-22
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