"Alvin Maker 06 - The Crystal City 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

"Well I'm not sure I did anything," said Alvin. "Your mother may feel better but I didn't cure whatever caused the fever. She's still sick, and she still needs to rest and let her body work on whatever's wrong."
Alvin was on his feet now, and he looked back to see the mother standing in the doorway, tears still running down her cheeks.
"I mean it," said Alvin. "Send her back to bed. She keeps standing there, the skeeters'll eat her alive."
"I love you," said the girl. "I love you forever, you good man!"

Back in the plaza, Arthur Stuart was sitting on top of the four water jars-which he had moved some twenty yards away from the fountain. Which was a good thing, because there must have been a hundred people or more jostling around it now.
Alvin didn't worry about the crowd-he was mostly just relieved that they weren't jostling around some uppity young black man.
"Took you long enough," Arthur Stuart whispered.
"Her mother was real sick," said Alvin.
"Yeah, well, word got out that this was the sweetest-tasting water ever served up in Barcy, and now folks are saying it can heal the sick or Jesus turned the water into wine or it's a sign of the second coming or the devil was cast out of it and I had to tell five different people that our water came from the fountain before it got all hexed or healed or whatever they happen to believe. I was about to throw dirt into it just to make it convincing."
"So stop talking and pick up your jars."
Arthur Stuart stood up and reached for a jar, but then stopped and puzzled over it. "How do I pick up the second one, while I got the first one on my shoulder?"
Alvin solved the problem by picking up both the half-filled jars by the lip and putting them on Arthur's shoulders. Then Alvin picked up the two full ones and hoisted them onto his own shoulders.
"Well, don't you make it look easy," said Arthur Stuart.
"I can't help it that I've got the grip and the heft of a blacksmith," said Alvin. "I earned them the hard way-you could do it too, if you wanted."
"I haven't heard you offering to make me no apprentice blacksmith."
"Because you're an apprentice maker, and not doing too bad at it."
"Did you heal the woman?"
"Not really. But I healed some of the damage the disease did."
"Meaning she can run a mile without panting, right?"
"Where she lives, it's more like splash a couple of dozen yards. That mud looked like it could swallow up whole armies and spit them back out as skeeters."
"Well, you done what you could, and we're done with it," said Arthur Stuart.
They got back to the house of Squirrel and Moose and poured the water into the cistern. Mixed in with what they already had, the cleaned water improved the quality only a little, but that was fine with Alvin. People kept overreacting. He was just a fellow using his knack.

Back at the house of Dead Mary-or Marie d'Espoir-nobody was following Alvin's advice. The woman he had saved was outside checking crawfish traps, getting bitten by skeeter after skeeter. She didn't mind anymore-in a swamp full of gators and cottonmouths, what was a little itching and a few dozen welts?
Meanwhile, the skeeters, engorged with her blood, spread out over the swamp. Some of them ended up in the city, and each person they bit ended up with a virulent dose of yellow fever growing in their blood.


3

Fever


SUPPER THAT EVENING was bedlam, the children moving in and out of the kitchen in shifts with the normal amount of shoving and jostling and complaining. It reminded Alvin of growing up with his brothers and sisters, only because there were so many more children, and of nearly the same age, it was even more confusing. A few quarrels even flared, white-hot in an instant, then promptly silenced by Mama Squirrel flinging a bit of water at the offenders or by Papa Moose speaking a name. The children didn't seem to fear punishment; it was his disapproval that they dreaded.
The food was plain and poor, but healthy and there was plenty of it. So much, in fact, that both serving pots had soup left in them. Mama Squirrel poured them back into the big cauldron by the fire. "I never made but one batch of soup in all the years we've lived here," she said.
Even the old bread and the half-eaten scraps from the children's bowls were scraped into the big pot. "As long as I bring the pot to a long hard boil before serving it again, there's no harm from adding it back into the soup."
"It's like life," said Papa Moose, who was scouring dishes at the sink. "Dust to dust, pot to pot, one big round, it never ends." Then he winked. "I throw some cayenne peppers in it from time to time, that's what makes it all edible."
Then the children were herded upstairs into the dormitories, kissing their parents as they passed. Papa Moose beckoned Alvin to come with him as he followed the children up. It wasn't quick, following him up the stairs, but not slow, either. He seemed to bob up the stairs on his good foot, the clubbed foot somewhat extended so it stayed out of the way and, perhaps, balanced him a bit. It was wise not to follow too close behind him, or you could find out just how much of a club that foot could be.
They all lay down on mats on the floor-a floor well-limed and clean-swept. But not to sleep. One-hour candles were lighted all around the room, and all the children lay there, pretending to be asleep while Papa Moose and Mama Squirrel made a pantomime of tiptoeing out of the room. Naturally, Alvin glanced back into the room and saw that every single child pulled a book or pamphlet out from under their mat and began to read.
Alvin came back downstairs with Moose and Squirrel, grinning as he went. "It's a shame none of your children can read," he said.
Papa Moose held to the banister and half hopped, half slid down the stairs on his good foot. "It's not as if there were anything worth reading in the world," he said.
"Though I wish they could read the holy scriptures," said Mama Squirrel.
"Of course, they might be reading on the sly," said Alvin.
"Oh, no," said Papa Moose. "They are strictly forbidden to do such a thing."
"Papa Moose showed our ragged little collection of books to all the children and told them they must never borrow those books and carefully return them as soon as they're done."
"It's good to teach children to obey," said Alvin.
" 'Obedience is better than sacrifice,' " quoted Papa Moose.
They sat down at the kitchen table, where Arthur Stuart was already seated, reading a book. Alvin realized after a moment that it was written in Spanish. "You're taking this new language of yours pretty serious."
"Since you know everything there is to know in English," said Arthur Stuart, "I reckon this is the only way to get one up on you."
They talked for a while about the children-how they supported them, mostly. They depended a lot on donations from likeminded persons, but since those were in short supply in Barcy, it was always nip and tuck, allowing nothing to go to waste. "Use it up," intoned Papa Moose, "wear it out, make it do or do without."