"Gordon R. Dickson - Alien Art" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

But the woodsman glanced about as if in a palace. He had recently shaved
and carefully washed. But under the bony jawline, his thin neck was
shadowed with uncleansed grime. In his leather and woolen clothes he
looked half-starved and feral, a smoke- and dirt-stained whipcord of a
man imprisoned by unfamiliar barriers to land and sky. In his hands he
carried a homemade wooden box about ten inches on a side.

"That's all right," Lige said. "Come on, sit down. I pay for the
room-people who come to see me can do anything I invite them to, here."

Cary came forward. He perched on the seat edge of a heavy, fabric
armchair facing the bed on which Lige was sitting and passed the box
into Lige's hands. Its weight was surprising. Lige almost dropped it.
"They're in there," Cary said.



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"The carvings your friend made?" Lige fumbled with the box, discovered
that the top slid aside, and opened it. Within were a number of
reddish-brown rocks, very heavy for their size. Lige took them out one
by one and lined them up- there were six of them-on the bedspread.

He picked them up and turned them over, examining each again. He looked
at Cary.

"What is this? A joke?" he said.

Cary was leaning forward from the waist, painfully tense in his waiting.
But when Lige spoke, the tension dissolved in puzzlement.

"Mister?"

"These-" Lige jabbed a forefinger toward them. "These are carvings?"

"Sure, mister," said Cary. "The ones I wrote you about. Charlie made
them."

"He did?" Lige stared hard at Cary, but Cary still looked only puzzled.
"Did you see him carve them?"

"Some," said Cary. "Some he did when I wasn't there."

"Carvings of what?"

"Of . . . ?"