"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

It was after a Popular Concert which had included all of Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied
Violoncello that I ventured to remonstrate with my Mentor.
"Constable, all this culture may be very well, but sometimes a fellow needs, well, d-mn it! What do
ordinary people nowadays do for amusement?"
He frowned slightly. "My dear sir, it is out of consideration for you that I have exposed you only to
our lighter forms of entertainment. I presume you are referring to something in the nature of a Music Hall,
or Vaudeville. I assure you that, since the advent of Universal Education, even the popular taste has
become too refined to tolerate the foolishness of sentimental songs and lurid melodrama. Also, please do
not use again the expression you have just uttered. I mean the one beginning with the letter D. Our
twentieth-century society has grown unaccustomed to language of such violence."
тАФDavid T. J. Doughan

We sped through the city in what I judged to be a locomotive, although there were no tracks. "What
new wonder shall I see?" I mused, for many were the sights shown me already. My guide, an illustrious
professor, halted the machine.
"In this mill, fine white flour is made. All unwholesome parts of the grain are removed and certain
substances poisonous to insects and rodents are introduced." I followed in as he continued: "Only women
are employed here, though they don't stay long."
"Why not?" I shouted over the din, my eye caught by a certain face.
He replied, "They quickly become deaf and so have no need to speak. Indeed, few work more than
a year. They are prized as wives, for they never nag their husbands."
I looked at the girl, an exact double of my lost love. Beautiful and quiet. What more could a man ask!
тАФJanet E. Pearson


Tom Reamy wrote four stories for F&SF: тАЬTwilla," "Insects in Amber," "San Diego LJghtfoot
Sue" (a Nebula award winner), and the gripping story you are about to read. He also wrote a
novel, Blind Voices. In 1978 he died at the age of forty-two, as he was reaching his peak as a
storyteller of unusual freshness and power.

The Detweiler Boy
TOM REAMY

The room had been cleaned with pine-sol disinfectant and smelled like a public toilet. Harry Spinner
was on the floor behind the bed, scrunched down between it and the wall. The almost colorless chenille
bedspread had been pulled askew exposing part of the clean, but dingy, sheet. All I could see of Harry
was one leg poking over the edge of the bed. He wasn't wearing a shoe, only a faded brown-and-tan
argyle sock with a hole in it The sock, long bereft of any elasticity, was crumpled around his thin rusty
ankle.
I closed the door quietly behind me and walked around the end of the bed so I could see all of him.
He was huddled on his back with his elbows propped up by the wall and the bed. His throat had been
cut. The blood hadn't spread very far. Most of it had been soaked up by the threadbare carpet under the
bed. I looked around the grubby little room but didn't find anything. There were no signs of a struggle, no
signs of forced entryтАФbut then, my BankAmericard hadn't left any signs either. The window was open,
letting in the muffled roar of traffic on the Boulevard. I stuck my head out and looked, but it was three
stories straight down to the neon-lit marquee of the movie house.
It had been nearly two hours since Harry called me. "Bertram, my boy, I've run across something
very peculiar. I don't really know what to make of it."
I had put away the report I was writing on Lucas McGowan's hyperactive wife. (She had a definite
predilection for gas-pump jockeys, car-wash boys, and parking-lot attendants. I guess it had something