"Dick, Phillip - 1987 - Mary And The Giant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

 ■Philip K. Dick - Mary And The Giant v1.0




Copyright й 1987 by the estate of Philip K. Dick.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Published in the United States of America by Arbor House Publishing Company and in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

Dick, Philip K.
Mary and the giant.

I. Title.
PS3554.13M3 1987 813'.54 86-26502
ISBN 0-87795-850-5




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To the right of the hurrying car, beyond the shoulder of the highway, stood a gathering of cows. Not far beyond rested more brown shapes, half-hidden by the shadow of a barn. On the side of the barn an old Coca-Cola sign was vaguely visible.
Joseph Schilling, seated in the back of the car, reached into his watch pocket and brought out his gold watch. With an expert dig of his nail he lifted the lid and read the time. It was two-forty in the afternoon, the hot, midsummer California afternoon.
"How much farther?" he inquired, with a stir of dissatisfaction. He was weary of the motion of the car and the flow of farmlands outside the windows.
Hunched over the steering wheel, Max grunted without turning his head. "Ten, maybe fifteen minutes."
"You know what I'm talking about?"
"You're talking about that town you marked on the map. It's ten or fifteen minutes ahead. I saw a mileage sign back a ways; at that last bridge."
More cows came into sight, and with them more dry fields. The far-off mountain haze had, during the last few hours, settled gradually into the depths of the valleys. Wherever Joseph Schilling looked the haze lay dully spread out, obscuring the baked hills and pastures, the assorted fruit orchards, the occasional calcimined farm buildings. And, directly ahead, the beginnings of the town: two billboards and a fresh egg stand. He was glad to see the town arrive.
"We've never been through here," he said. "Have we?"
"The closest we've come is Los Gatos, on that vacation you took back in '49."
"Nothing can be done more than once," Schilling said. "New things must be found. As Heraclitus would say, the river is always different."
"It all looks alike to me. All this farm country." Max pointed to a herd of sheep collected under an oak tree. "That's those sheep again ... we've been passing them all day."
From his inside coat pocket Schilling got out a black leather notebook, a fountain pen, and a folded map of California. He was a large man, in his late fifties; his hands, as he gripped the map, were massive and yellowed, the skin grained, fingers knobby, nails thick to the point of opaqueness. He wore a rough tweed suit, vest, somber wool tie; his shoes were black leather, English-made, dusty with highway grime.
"Yes, we'll stop," he decided, putting away his notebook and pen. "I want to spend an hour getting a look around. There's always the possibility this one might do. How would you like that?"
"Fine."
"What's the town called?"
"Thigh Junction."
Schilling smiled. "Don't be funny."
"You have the map-look it up." Grumpily, Max admitted, "Pacific Park. Set in the heart of rich California. Only two days of rain a year. Owns its own ice plant."
Now the town proper was emerging on both sides of the highway. Fruit stands, a Standard station, one isolated grocery store with cars parked in the dirt plot alongside it. From the highway wandered narrow, bumpy roads. Houses came into sight as the Dodge pulled over into the slower lane.