"The World Jones Made" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

Rafferty had halted, hands in his overcoat pockets. "It's up to you," he said stonily. "You want to go on?"

None of them answered; none of them even heard him.

"Your systems won't take the natural air," Rafferty continued. "Or the temperature. Or the food. Or anything." He glanced at Cussick, an expression of pain on his face, an acute reflection of suffering that startled the Security official. "So let's give up," he said harshly. "Let's call the Van and go back."

Vivian nodded faintly; her lips moved, but there was no sound.

Turning, Rafferty curtly signalled. The Van rolled instantly up; robot equipment dropped to the pavement and scuttled up to the four collapsed figures. In a moment they were being lifted into the Van's locks. The expedition had failed; it was over. Cussick had had his view of them. He had seen their struggle and their defeat.

For a time he and Doctor Rafferty stood on the cold night sidewalk without speaking, each involved in his own thoughts. Finally Rafferty stirred. "Thanks for clearing the streets," he murmured.

"I'm glad I had time," Cussick answered. "It might have been bad . . . some of Jones' Youth League Patrols are roaming around."

"The eternal Jones. We really don't have a chance."

"Let's be like these four we just saw; let's keep trying."

"But it's true."

"It's true," Cussick agreed. "Just as it's true your mutants can't breathe out here. But we set up road-blocks anyhow; we cleared the streets and hoped to hell we pushed them back this one time."

"Have you ever seen Jones?"

"Several times," Cussick said. "I met him face to face, back in the days before he had an organization, before anybody had heard of him."

"When he was a minister," Rafferty reflected. "With a church."

"Before that," Cussick said, thinking back. It seemed impossible that there had been a time before Jones, a time when there had been no need of clearing the streets. When there had been no gray-uniformed shapes roaming the streets, collecting in mobs. The crash of breaking glass, the furious crackling of fire . . .

"What was he doing then?" Rafferty asked.

"He was in a carnival," Cussick said.

________________________________________________________________



CHAPTER TWO


HE WAS twenty-six years old when he first met Jones. It was April 4, 1995. He always remembered that day; the spring air was cool and full of the smell of new growth. The war had ended the year before.

Ahead of him spread out a long descending slope. Houses were perched here and there, mostly privately-constructed shelters, temporary and flimsy. Crude streets, working-class people wandering . . . a typical rural region that had survived, remote from industrial centers. Normally there would be the hum of activity: plows and forges and crude manufacturing processes. But today a quiet hung over the community. Most able-bodied adults, and all of the children, had trudged off to the carnival.

The ground was soft and moist under his shoes. Cussick strode eagerly along, because he, too, was going to the carnival. He had a job.

Jobs were scarce; he was glad to get it. Like other young men intellectually sympathetic to Hoff's Relativism, he had applied for the government service. Fedgov's apparatus offered a chance to become involved in the task of Reconstruction; as he was earning a salary--paid in stable silver--he was helping mankind.