"Jack Finney - Of Missing Persons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finney Jack)

In another, a tree trunk seemed to curve out of the page, in perfect detail, and it was a shock to touch it
and feel smooth paper instead of the rough actuality of bark. Miniature human faces, in a third picture,
seemed about to speak, the lips moist and alive, the eyeballs shining, the actual texture of skin right there
on paper; and it seemed impossible, as you stared, that the people wouldn't move and speak.

I studied a large picture spreading across the tops of two open pages. It seemed to have been taken
from the top of a hill; you saw the land dropping away at your feet far down into a valley, then rising up
again, way over on the other side. The slopes of both hills were covered with forest, and the color was
beautiful, perfect; there were miles of green, majestic trees, and you knew as you looked that this forest
was virgin, almost untouched. Curving through the floor of the valley, far below, ran a stream, blue from
the sky in most places; here and there, where the current broke around massive boulders, the water was
foaming white; and again it seemed that if you'd only look closely enough you'd be certain to see that
stream move and shine in the sun. In clearings beside the stream there were shake-roofed cabins, some
of logs, some of brick or adobe. The caption under the picture simply said, "The Colony."

"Fun fooling around with a thing like that," the man behind the counter murmured, nodding at the
folder in my hands. "Relieves the monotony. Attractive-looking place, isn't it?"


I could only nod dumbly, lowering my eyes to the picture again because that picture told you even
more than just what you saw. I don't know how you knew this, but you realized, staring at that
forest-covered valley, that this was very much the way America once looked when it was new. And you
knew this was only a part of a whole land of unspoiled, unharmed forests, where every stream ran pure;
you were seeing what people, the last of them dead over a century ago, had once looked at in Kentucky
and Wisconsin and the old Northwest. And you knew that if you could breathe in that air you'd feel it
flow into your lungs sweeter than it's been anywhere on earth for a hundred and fifty years.

Under that picture was another, of six or eight people on a beachтАФthe shore of a lake, maybe, or the
river in the picture above. Two children were squatting on their haunches, dabbling in the water's edge,
and in the foreground a half circle of adults were sitting, kneeling, or squatting in comfortable balance on
the yellow sand. They were talking, several were smoking, and most of them held half-filled coffee cups;
the sun was bright, you knew the air was balmy and that it was morning, just after breakfast. They were
smiling, one woman talking, the others listening. One man had half risen from his squatting position to skip
a stone out onto the surface of the water.

You knew this: that they were spending twenty minutes or so down on that beach after breakfast
before going to work, and you knew they were friends and that they did this every day. You knewтАФI tell
you, you knewтАФthat they liked their work, all of them, whatever it was; that there was no forced hurry
or pressure about it. And thatтАФwell, that's all, I guess; you just knew that every day after breakfast these
families spent a leisurely half hour sitting and talking, there in the morning sun, down on that wonderful
beach.

I'd never seen anything like their faces before. They were ordinary enough in looks, the people in that
picture-pleasant, more or less familiar types. Some were young, in their twenties; others were in their
thirties; one man and woman seemed around fifty. But the faces of the youngest couple were completely
unlined, and it occurred to me then that they had been born there, and that it was a place where no one
worried or was ever afraid. The others, the older ones, there were lines in their foreheads, grooves
around their mouths, but you felt that the lines were no longer deepening, that they were healed and
untroubled scars. And in the faces of the oldest couple was a look ofтАФI'd say it was a look of
permanent relief. Not one of those faces bore a trace of malice; these people were happy. But even