"Gordon Eklund - Serving in Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eklund Gordon)

Scanned by Highroller.

Proofed by .

Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet.



Serving in Time by
Gordon Eklund
CHAPTER ONE
Lying cautiously prone on his belly, Jan Jeroux raised his chin
a few inches off the stiff blanket of dry grass, then edged carefully
forward on his elbows until he reached a place where the hill
sloped gradually away. From here he could easily make out the
wide corn field which lay directly below. Squinting against the
sun, he shifted his head to see between the high stalks and
counted seven, eightтАФno, nine figures moving between the rows.
Nine, yes, and with himself that made ten. Grunting in
satisfaction, he then began edging backward. If they were all
down there, it meant they had given up looking for him. Just as
well. The whole thing made him mad. What made them think he
should be down there, too? He didn't even like to eat corn, why
should he have to go and pick it?

He made his way back to the safety of a giant willow tree and
slipped beneath its drooping branches. It was dark under here,
and hot. He picked up the book he had been reading and laid it
open on his lap, but he was still too mad to resume reading.
When a person was just growing up and learning about the
world in which he lived, how could anyone demand he waste his
precious time wallowing in the dirt, planting and picking corn?
Wasn't it boldly proclaimed right in the preamble to the
Homestead Constitution that this was a free world? And didn't
that therefore indicate that he, Jan Jeroux, was a free man? So
what was so terribly wrong if he chose to act like one?

The question seemed to satisfy him as much as any
conceivable answer, so he rolled on his side and tried to read.
The hot summer sun penetrated the unmoving branches of the
willow and beat against his bare back and shoulders.

The book was a chunk of old history dealing with the faraway
world of the nineteenth century. Uncle Phineas had loaned Jan
the volume from his vast private library. The tale told of a
peculiar peasant boy named Huckleberry Finn, who ran away
from his family homestead to seek the world. Jan loved the
bookтАФhe had read it twice beforeтАФeven though it never failed to
puzzle him, too. Some of the strangeness he had managed to
penetrate. Homesteads, for instance, were clearly much smaller