"Avram Davidson - The House the Blakeneys Built" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

It's just that we have to live our own way. In our own houses."

The silence was broken by a baby Blakeney. "What's 'houses'?" he asked.

He was shushed. "No such word, hey," he was told, too.

Robert went on, "We're going to ask you to lend us things. We want enough
grain and tatoplants and such to last till we can get our own crops in, and
enough milk-cattle and draft-animals until we can breed some of our own. Will
you do that for us?"

Except for Young Whitey Bill, crouched by the burning, who mumbletalked with
"Rower, rower, rower," they still kept silence. Popping blue eyes stared,
faces were perhaps more florid than usual, large, slack mouths trembled
beneath long hook-noses.
"We're wasting time," Ezra said.

Robert sighed. "Well, we have no other choice, friends тАж Blakeneys тАж We're
going to have to take what we need, then. But we'll pay you back, as soon as
we can, two for one. And anytime you want our help or service, you can have
it. We'll be friends again. We must be friends. There are so many, many ways
we can help one another to live betterтАФand we are all there are, really, of
humanity, on all this planet. WeтАФ"

Ezra nudged him, half-pulled him away. They took a wagon and a team of horses,
a dray and a yoke of freemartins, loaded up with food. They took cows and
ewes, a yearling bull and a shearling ram, a few bolts of cloth, and seed. No
one prevented them, or tried to interfere, as they drove away. Robert turned
and looked behind at the silent people. But then, head sunk, he watched only
the bay road ahead of him, looking aside neither to the water or the woods.

"It's good that they can see us here," he said, later on that day. "It's bound
to make them think, and, sooner or later, they'll come around."

They came sooner than he thought.

"I'm so glad to see you, friends!" Robert came running out to greet them. They
seized and bound him with unaccustomed hands. Then, paying no attention to his
anguished cries of "Why? Why?" they rushed into the new house and dragged out
Shulamith and Mikicho and the baby. They drove the animals from their stalls,
but took nothing else. The stove was now the major object of interest. First
they knocked it over, then they scattered the burning coals all about, then
they lit brands of burnwood and scrambled around with them. In a short while
the building was all afire.

The Blakeneys seemed possessed. Faces red, eyes almost popping from their
heads, they mumbled-shouted and raved. When Ezra, who had been working in the
shed came running, fighting, they bore him to the ground and beat him with
pieces of wood. He did not get up when they were through; it seemed apparent
that he never would. Mikicho began a long and endless scream.