《A Plain Tale from Our Hills 》作者：- Bruce Sterling【EPUB】

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A Plain Tale from Our Hills by Bruce Sterling Little Flora ate straw as other children eat bread. No matter how poor our harvests we never lacked for straw. So Flora feasted every day andoutgrew every boy and girl her age. In summer when the dust-storms off the plains scourge ourhills the children sicken. Flora thrived. Always munching the tot was as round as a barreland scarcely seemed to sweat. It was Captain Kusak and his young wife Baratiya who hadvolunteered to breed her. Baratiya was as proud of her little prodigy as if she had given birthto the moon. Bold strokes of this kind are frequently discussed in Government yet rarelycrowned with success. No one should have resented Baratiya’s excellent luck in the venture.Still certain women in our Hill Station took her attitude badly. Kusak should have donesomething useful and tactful about the matter because he had also hoped and planned for a newkind of child one fit to live more lightly on our stricken Earth. Captain Kusak tried to speaksome common-sense to his wife I think but he was clumsy so this made her stubborn. Baratiyalost friends and her social prospects darkened. She obsessed so single-mindedly about the childthat even her husband grew estranged from her. Baratiya is more sensible now that other such children have been born to us. At the timethough this woman was the talk of our Station. You see though motherhood is the golden key to humanity’s future it can be a leaden burdenin the present day. And as for the past–well Many of us scarcely understand that a mere half-century ago this world was crowded. Certain grand people existed in those greater louder