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

"spells." After a moment or two-during which the wagon didn't shimmer or fade around the edges at
all-he widened his attention enough to notice the signs: big hand-painted signs hung on either
side of a kind of sandwich board framework that was braced upright in the wagon bed. At the top
each sign read MOHAWK CONFEDERACY in bright red paint, and then, underneath that, came a long list
of words, each word painted in a different color:
HAND-LOADED AMMUNITION PAINT FALSE TEETH EYEGLASSES-GROUND TO PRESCRIPTION LAMP OIL PAINLESS
DENTISTRY UNTAINTED SEED FOR WHEAT, CORN, MELONS FLAX CLOTH WINDOW GLASS MEDICINES & LINIMENT
CONDOMS IRON FARM TOOLS UNTAINTED LIVESTOCK NAILS MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS MARIJUANA WHISKY SOAP
PRINTING DONE !ALL MADE IN MOHAWK!
Jamie was puzzling out some of the harder words when the door to the Outriders' station opened and
Mr. Stover came hurriedly down the stairs. "What're you doing here,
Jamie?" he asked. "What're you hanging around here for?"
Jamie gaped at him, trying to find the words to describe the wonderful new wagon, and how strange
it made him feel, but the effort was too great, and the words slipped away. "Going to Mr. Hardy's
store," he said at last. "Just going to sweep up at Mr. Hardy's store."
Mr. Stover glanced nervously back up at the door of the Outriders' station, fingered his chin for
a moment while he made up his mind, and then said, "Never mind that today, Jamie. Never mind about
the store today. You just go on back home now."
"But-" Jamie said, bewildered. "But-I sweep up every day!"
"Not today," Mr. Stover said sharply. "You go on home, you hear me? Go on, git!"
"Mrs. Hamlin's going to be awful mad," Jamie said sadly, resignedly.
"You tell Edna I said for you to go home. And you stay inside, too, Jamie. You stay out of sight,
hear? We've got an important visitor here in Northview today, and it'd never do to have him run
into you."
Jamie nodded his head in acceptance of this. He wasn't so dumb that he didn't know what the
unvoiced part of the sentence was: run into you, the half-wit, the crazy person, the nut. He'd
heard it often enough. He knew he was crazy. He knew that he was an embarrassment. He knew that he
had to stay inside, away from visitors, lest he embarrass Mrs. Hamlin and all his friends.
Crazy Jamie.
Slowly he turned and shuffled away, back the way he had come.
The sun' beat down on the back of his head now, and sweat gathered in the wrinkled hollows beneath
his eyes.
Crazy Jamie.
At the corner, bathed in the shadow cast by the big oak at the edge of the schoolyard, he turned
and looked back.
A group of men had come out of the Outriders' station and were now walking slowly in the direction
of Mr. Hardy's store, talking as they went. There was Mr. Jameson, Mr. Galli, Mr. Stover, Mr.
Ashley, and, in the middle of them, talking animatedly and waving his arms, the visitor, the
stranger-a big, florid-faced man with a shock of unruly blond hair that shone like beaten gold in
the sunlight.
Watching him, the visitor-now clapping a hand on Mr. Galli's shoulder, Mr. Galli shrinking away-
Jamie felt a chill, that unreasoning and unreasoned fear of strangers, of everything from outside
Northview's narrow boundaries, that had affected him ever since he could remember, and suddenly
his delight in the wonderful wagon was tarnished, diminished, because he realized that it, too,
must come from outside.
He headed for home, walking a little faster now, as if chivied along by some old cold wind that
didn't quite reach the sunlit world.
That night was the Fourthday feast-"Independence Day," some of the old folks still called it-and
for Jamie, who was helping in the kitchen as usual, the early part of the evening was a blur of
work as they sweated to prepare the meal: roast turkey, ham, wild pigeon, trout, baked raccoon,