"Ellison-SensibleCity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

"Have you ever thought how lucky you are that your mother abandoned you,
Mickey?" Gropp said wearily. "Because if she hadn't, and if they hadn't brought
you to the county jail for temporary housing till they could put you in a foster
home, and I hadn't taken an interest in you, and hadn't arranged for you to live
with the Rizzos, and hadn't let you work around the lockup, and hadn't made you
my deputy, do you have any idea where you'd be today?" He paused for a moment,
waiting for an answer, realized the entire thing was rhetorical -- not to
mention pointless -- and said, "Yes, it's green in the sky, pal, but it's also
something odd. Have you ever seen 'green in the sky' before? Anywhere? Any
time?"

"No, I guess I haven't." Gropp sighed, and closed his eyes.

They drove in silence another nineteen miles, and the green miasma in the air
enveloped them. It hung above and around them like sea-fog, chill and with tiny
droplets of moisture that Mickey fanned away with the windshield wipers. It made
the landscape on either side of the superhighway faintly visible, cutting the
impenetrable darkness, but it also induced a wavering, ghostly quality to the
terrain.

Gropp turned on the map light in the dome of the Firebird, and studied the map
of Nebraska. He murmured, "I haven't got a rat's-fang of any idea where the hell
we are! There isn't even a freeway like this indicated here. You took some
helluva wrong turn 'way back there, pal!" Dome light out.

"I'm sorry, Loo-Harold . . ."

A large reflective advisement marker, green and white, came up on their right.
It said: FOOD GAS LODGING 10 MILES.

The next sign said: EXIT 7 MILES.

The next sign said: OBEDIENCE 3 MILES.

Gropp turned the map light on again. He studied the venue. "Obedience? What the
hell kind of 'Obedience'? There's nothing like that anywhere. What is this, an
old map? Where did you get this map?"

"Gas station."

"Where?"

"I dunno. Back a long ways. That place we stopped with the root beer stand next
to it."

Gropp shook his head, bit his lip, murmured nothing in particular. "Obedience,"
he said. "Yeah, huh?"

They began to see the town off to their right before they hit the exit turnoff.
Gropp swallowed hard and made a sound that caused Mickey to look over at him.