"Gardner Dozois & Jack Haldeman - Executive Clemency" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

mortar chinked chimneys. It seemed especially wrong that there were no automobiles in the streets,
no roar and clatter of traffic, no reek of gasoline, no airplanes in the sky-
He turned away from the window. For a moment everything was sick and wrong, and he blinked at the
homey, familiar room as though he'd never seen it before, as though it were an unutterably alien
place. Everything became hot and tight and terrifying, closing down on him. What's happening? he
asked himself blindly. He leaned against a crossbeam, dazed and baffled, until the distant sound
of Mrs. Hamlin's voice-she was scolding Tessie in the kitchen, and the ruckus rose all the way up
through three floors of pine and plaster and fine old penny nails-
woke him again to his surroundings, with something like pleasure, with something like pain.
Jamie, they called him. Crazy Jamie.
Shaking his head and muttering to himself, Jamie collected his robe and his shaving kit and walked
down the narrow, peeling corridor to the small upstairs bedroom. The polished hardwood floor was
cold under his feet.


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The bathroom was cold, too. It was only the beginning of July, but already the weather was
starting to turn nippy late at night and early in the morning. It got colder every year, seemed
like. Maybe the glaciers were coming back, as some folks said. Or maybe it was just that he
himself was worn a little thinner every year, a little closer to the ultimate cold of the grave.
Grunting, he wedged himself into the narrow space between the sink and the down slant of the roof,
bumping his head, as usual, against the latch of the skylight window. There was just enough room
for him if he stood hunch-shouldered with the toilet bumping up against his thigh. The toilet was
an old porcelain monstrosity, worn smooth as glass, that gurgled constantly and comfortably and
emitted a mellow breath of earth. It was almost company. The yard boy had already brought up a big
basin of "hot" water, although by now, after three or four other people had already used it, it
was gray and cold; after the last person used it, it would be dumped down the toilet to help flush
out the system. He opened his shaving kit and took out a shapeless cake of lye soap, a worn hand
towel, a straight razor.
The mirror above the sink was cracked and tarnished no help for it, nobody made mirrors anymore.
It seemed an appropriate background for the reflection of his face, which was also, in its way,
tarnished and dusty and cracked with age. He didn't know how old he was; that was one of the many
things Doc Norton had warned him
not to think about, so long ago. He couldn't even remember how long he'd been living here in
Northview. Ten years? Fifteen? He studied himself in the mirror, the blotched, earth-colored skin,
the eyes sunk deep under a shelf of brow, the network of fine wrinkles. A well-preserved seventy?
Memory was dim; the years were misty and fell away before he could number them. He shied away from
trying to remember. Didn't matter.
He covered the face with lathered soap.
By the time he finished dressing, the other tenants had already gone downstairs. He could hear
them talking down there, muffled and distant, like water bugs whispering at the mossy bottom of a
deep old well. Cautiously Jamie went back into the hall. The wood floors and paneling up here were
not as nicely finished as those in the rest of the house. He thought of all the hidden splinters
in all that wood, waiting to catch his flesh. He descended the stairs. The banister swayed as he
clutched it, groaning softly to remind him that it, too, was old.
As he came into the dining room, conversation died. The other tenants looked up at him, looked
away again. People fiddled with their tableware, adjusted their napkins, pulled their chairs
closer to the table or pushed them farther away. Someone coughed self-consciously.