"Aldiss, Brian W - Greybeard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

everyone else in the village, had had the necessity for continuous guard drummed into them often enough,
but they kept their eyes tracing the seamed lines on the board floor, knowing the effort involved in thrusting
old legs an extra time up and down stairs and an extra time round the perimeter.
The advantage lay with Sam, as he sensed. Facing Greybeard more boldly, he said, "Why don't you take
over for twenty minutes if you're so keen on defending the dump? You're a young man - it'll do you good to
have a stretch."
Greybeard tucked the leather sling of the rifle over his left shoulder and turned to Towin, who stopped
gnawing the top of his cudgel to look up.
"Strike the alarm gong if you want me in a hurry, and not otherwise. Remind old Betty it's not a dinner
gong."
The woman cackled as he moved towards the door, buttoning his baggy jacket.
"Your grub's just on ready, Algy. Why not stay and eat it?" she asked.
Greybeard slammed the door without answering. They listened to his heavy tread descending the stairs.
"You don't reckon he took offence, do you? He wouldn't report me to old Mole, would he?" Sam asked
anxiously. The others mumbled neutrally and hugged their lean ribs; they did not want to be involved in any
trouble.
Greybeard walked slowly along the middle of the street, avoiding the puddles still left from a rainstorm
two days ago. Most of Sparcot's drains and gutters were blocked; but the reluctance of the water to run away
was due mainly to the marshiness of the land. Somewhere upstream, debris was blocking the river, causing it
to overflow its banks. He must speak to Mole; they must get up an expedition to look into the trouble. But
Mole was growing increasingly cantankerous, and his policy of isolationism would be against any move out
of the village.
He chose to walk by the river, to continue round the perimeter of the stockade afterwards. He brushed
through an encroaching elder's stark spikes, smelling as he did so a melancholy-sweet smell of the river and
the things that mouldered by it.
Several of the houses that backed on to the river had been devoured by fire before he and his fellows
came to live here. Vegetation grew sturdily inside and outside their shells. On a back gate lying crookedly in
long grass, faded lettering proclaimed the name of the nearest shell: Thameside.
Farther on, the houses were undamaged by fire and inhabited. Greybeard's own house was here. He
looked at the windows, but caught no sight of his wife, Martha; she would be sitting quietly by the fire with
a blanket round her shoulders, staring into the grate and seeing - what? Suddenly an immense impatience
pierced Greybeard. These houses were a poor old huddle of buildings, nestling together like a bunch of
ravens with broken wings. Most of them had chimneys or guttering missing; each year they hunched their
shoulders higher as the roof-trees sagged. And in general the people fitted in well enough with this air of
decay. He did not; nor did he want his Martha to do so.
Deliberately, he slowed his thoughts. Anger was useless. He made a virtue of not being angry. But he
longed for a freedom beyond the fly-blown safety of Sparcot.
After the houses came Toby's trading post - a newer building that, and in better shape than most - and the
barns, ungraceful structures that commemorated the lack of skill with which they had been built. Beyond the
barns lay the fields, turned up in weals to greet the frosts of winter; shards of water glittered between
furrows. Beyond the fields grew the thickets marking the eastern end of Sparcot. Beyond Sparcot lay the
immense mysterious territory that was the Thames valley.
Just beyond the province of the village, an old brick bridge with a collapsed arch menaced the river, its
remains suggesting the horns of a ram, growing together in old age. Greybeard contemplated it and the fierce
little weir just beyond it - for that way lay whatever went by the name of freedom these days - and then
turned away to patrol the living stockade.
With the rifle comfortably under one crooked arm, he made his promenade. He could see across to the
other side of the clearing; it was deserted, apart from two men walking distantly among cattle, and a stooped
figure in the cabbage patch. He had the world almost to himself: and year by year he would have it more to
himself.