"Carol Emshwiller - Boys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

on your chin.



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So now, off to steal boys. We're a troop of older boys and younger men. The oldest maybe twenty-two,
half my age. I think of them all as boys, though I would never call them boys to their faces. I'm in charge.
My son, Hob, he's seventeen now, is with us.

But we no sooner creep down to the valley than we see things have changed since last year. The
mothers have put up a wall. They've built themselves a fort.

I immediately change our plans. I decide this will be copulation day, not boys day. Good military
strategy: Always be ready for a quick change of plan.

The minute I think this, I think Una. This is her town. My men look happy, too. This is not only
easier, but lots more fun than herding a new crop of boys.

Last time I came down at copulation time I found herтАФor she found me, she usually does. She's a
little old for copulation day, but I didn't want anybody but her. After copulation, I did things for her,
repaired a roof leak, fixed a broken table leg.тАж Then I took her over again, though it wasn't needed, and
caused my squad to have to wait for me. Got me a lot of lewd remarks, but I felt extraordinarily happy
anyway.

Sometimes on boys night I wonder, what if I stole Una along with boys? What if I dressed her as a
boy and brought her to some secret hiding place on our side of the mountain? There are lots of unused
caves. Once our armies occupied them all, but that was long ago. Both us and our enemies seem to be
dwindling. Every year there are fewer and fewer suitable boys.

Una always seems glad to see me even though I'm ugly and small. (My size is a disadvantage for a
soldier, though less so now that I have rank, but the ugliness тАж that's how I can tell which are my sons
тАж small, ugly boys, both of them. Too bad for them. But I've managed well even so, all the way up to
colonel.)

Una was my first. I was her first, too. I felt sorry for her, having to have me for her beginning to be a
woman. We were little more than children. We hardly knew what we were doing or how to do it.
Afterwards she cried. I felt like crying myself but I had learned not to. Not just learned it with the squad,
but I had learned it even before they took me from my mother. I wanted to be taken. I roamed far out
into the scrub, waiting for them to come and get me.

The pain in my hip started when I was one of those boys. It wasn't from a wound in a skirmish with
the enemy, but from a fight among ourselves. Our leaders were happy when we fought each other. We'd
have gotten soft and lazy if we didn't. I keep my mouth shut about my injury. I kept my mouth shut even
when I got it. I thought if they knew I could be so easily hurt they'd send me back. Later, I thought if they
knew about it, I might not be allowed to come on our raids. Later still I thought I might not be able to be
a colonel. I don't let myself limp though sometimes that makes me more breathless than I should be. So
far it doesn't seem as if anybody's noticed.