St. Amy's Tale

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2024-11-24 0 0 34.82KB 17 页 5.9玖币

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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."

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