"George Alec Effinger - All the Last Wars at Once" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

After a while the man asked him for some bullets.
"I didn't think that you had a gun," said Stevie.
"Yeah. I got a .38 in the glove compartment. I keep it there, well, I'm less likely to
use it."
"A .38? Well, these shells wouldn't do you any good, anyhow. Besides, I don't
really want to give them up yet."
The man looked at him again. He licked his lips, appearing to make some
decision. He took his eyes off the road for a moment and lunged across the seat in a
dive for one of the loaded pistols. Stevie slammed the edge of his hand into the older
man's throat. The man choked and collapsed on the seat. Stevie switched off the
engine and steered the car to the side of the road, where he opened the door and
dumped the still body.
Before he started the car again, Stevie opened the glove compartment. There was
an unloaded revolver and a crumpled factsheet. Stevie tossed the gun to the ground
by the old man. He smoothed out the wrinkled paper. The youth of the world, it
proclaimed, had declared war on everyone over the age of thirty years.


"How you coming with that factsheet?"
The thin man in the green workshirt stopped typing and looked up. "I don't know.
It's hard making out your crummy handwriting. Maybe another fifteen minutes. Are
they getting restless out there?"
 The man in the jacket gulped down some of his lukewarm coffee. "Yeah. I was
going to make an announcement, but what the hell. Let 'em wait. They had their vote,
they know what's coming. Just finish that factsheet. I want to get it run off and put
up before them goddamn Artists beat us to it."
"Look, Larry, them queers'll never think of it in the first place. Calm down."
The man in the workshirt typed in silence for a while. Larry walked around the
cold meeting hall, pushing chairs back in place and chewing his cigar nervously.
When the stencil was finished, the man in the workshirt pulled it out of the typewriter
and handed it to Larry. "All right," he said, "there it is. Maybe you better go read it
to them first. They been waiting out there for a couple of hours now."
"Yeah, I guess so," said Larry. He zipped up his green jacket and waited for the
man in the workshirt to get his coat. He turned off the lights and locked the door to
the hall. Outside was a huge crowd of men, all white and all well into middle age.
They cheered when Larry and the other man came out. Larry held up his hands for
quiet.
"All right, listen up," he said. "We got our factsheet here. Before we go and have
it run off, I'm going to let you hear it. It says just like what we voted for, so you all
should be pretty satisfied."
He read the factsheet, stopping every now and then to wait through the applause
and cheers of the men. He looked out at the crowd. They're all brawny veteran
types, he thought. That's what we are: We're Veterans. We been through it all. We're
the ones who know what's going on. We're the Producers.
The factsheet explained, in simple language unlike the bitter diatribes of other
groups, that the laborersтАФthe ProducersтАФof the world had gotten fed up with
doing all the work while a large portion of the populationтАФthe goddamn queer
ArtistsтАФdid nothing but eat up all the fruits of honest nine to five work. Artists
contributed nothing and wasted large amounts of our precious resources. It was
simple logic to see that the food, clothing, shelter, money, and recreational facilities