"Bradbury, Ray - The Illustrated Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

УAnd the factories, radioactive; everything radioactive. All the roads and the farms and the foods, radioactive. Everything.Ф He named more names of towns and villages.

УTampa.Ф

УThatТs my town,Ф someone whispered.

УFulton.Ф

УThatТs mine,Ф someone else said.

УMemphis.Ф

УMemphis. Did they burn Memphis?Ф A shocked query.

УMemphis, blown up.

УFourth Street in Memphis?Ф

УAll of it,Ф said the old man.

It was stirring them now. After twenty years it was rushing back. The towns and the places, the trees and the brick buildings, the signs and the churches and the familiar stores, all of it was coming to the surface among the gathered people. Each name touched memory, and there was no one present without a thought of another day. They were all old enough for that, save the children.

УLaredo.Ф

УI remember Laredo.Ф

УNew York City.Ф

УI had a store in Harlem.Ф

УHarlem, bombed out.Ф

The ominous words. The familiar, remembered places. The struggle to imagine all of those places in ruins.

Willie Johnson murmured the words, УGreenwater, Alabama. ThatТs where I was born. I remember.Ф

Gone. All of it gone. The man said so.

The man continued, УSo we destroyed everything and ruined everything, like the fools that we were and the fools that we are. We killed millions. I donТt think there are more than five hundred thousand people left in the world, all kinds and types. And out of all the wreckage we salvaged enough metal to build this one rocket, and we came to Mars in it this month to seek your help.Ф

He hesitated and looked down among the faces to see what could be found there, but he was uncertain.

Hattie Johnson felt her husbandТs arm tense, saw his fingers grip the rope.

УWeТve been fools,Ф said the old man quietly. УWeТve brought the Earth and civilization down about our heads. None of the cities are worth savingЧtheyТll be radioactive for a century. Earth is over and done with. Its age is through. You have rockets here which you havenТt tried to use to return to Earth in twenty years. Now IТve come to ask you to use them. To come to Earth, to pick up the survivors and bring them back to Mars. To help us go on at this time. WeТve been stupid. Before God we admit our stupidity and our evilness. All the Chinese and the Indians and the Russians and the British and the Americans. WeТre asking to be taken in. Your Martian soil has lain fallow for numberless centuries; thereТs room for everyone; itТs good soilЧIТve seen your fields from above. WeТll come and work it for you. Yes, weТll even do that. We deserve anything you want to do to us, but donТt shut us out. We canТt force you to act now. If you want IТll get into my ship and go back and that will be all there is to it. We wonТt bother you again. But weТll come here and weТll work for you and do the things you did for usЧclean your houses, cook your meals, shine your shoes, and humble ourselves in the sight of God for the things we have done over the centuries to ourselves, to others, to you.

He was finished.

There was a silence of silences. A silence you could hold in your hand and a silence that came down like a pressure of a distant storm over the crowd. Their long arms hung like dark pendulums in the sunlight, and their eyes were upon the old man and he did not move now, but waited.