"Zenna Henderson - People 1 - Pilgrimage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

"Now," he smoothed out his piece of paper, "chronologically
-Oh, first, where's Davey's recording gadget?"
"Gadget?" someone called. "What's wrong with our own memories?"
"Nothing," Jemmy said, "but we want this record independent of any of us, to go with whoever goes and
stay with whoever stays. We share the general memories, of course, but all the little details-well, anyway.
Davey's gadget." It had arrived on the table unobtrusively, small and undistinguished. "Now
chronologically-Karen, you're first-"
 "Who, me?" Karen straightened up, surprised. "Well, yes," she answered herself, settling back, "I guess I
am."
"Come to the desk," Jemmy said. "Be comfortable."
Karen squeezed Lea's hand and whispered, "Make way for wonder!" and, after threading her way
through the rows of desks, sat behind the table.
"I think I'll theme this beginning," she said. "We've remarked on the resemblance before, you know.
" 'And the Ark rested . . . upon the mountains of Ararat.' Ararat's more poetical than Baldy, anyway!
"And now," she smiled, "to establish Then again. Your help, please?"
Lea watched Karen, fascinated against her will. She saw her face alter and become younger. She saw
her hair change its part and lengthen. She felt years peel back from Karen like thin tissue and she leaned
forward, listening as Karen's voice, higher and younger, began ....

ARARAT

WE'VE HAD trouble with teachers in Cougar Canyon. It's just an accommodation school anyway,
isolated and so unhandy to anything. There's really nothing to hold a teacher. But the way the People
bring forth their young, in quantities and with regularity, even our small Group can usually muster the nine
necessary for the county superintendent to arrange for the schooling for the year.
Of course I'm past school age, Canyon school age, and have been for years, but if the tally came up one
short in the fall I'd go back for a postgraduate course again. But now I'm working on a college level
because Father finished me off for my high-school diploma two summers ago. He's promised me that if I
do well this year I'll get to go Outside next year and get my training and degree so I can be the teacher
and we won't have to go Outside for one any more. Most of the kids would just as soon skip school as
not, but the Old Ones don't hold with ignorance and the Old Ones have the last say around here.
Father is the head of the school board. That's how I get in on lots of school things the other kids don't.
This summer when he wrote to the county seat that we'd have more than our nine again this fall and
would they find a teacher for us, he got back a letter saying they had exhausted their supply of teachers
who hadn't heard of Cougar Canyon and we'd have to dig up our own teacher this year. That "'dig up"
sounded like a dirty crack to me since we have the graves of four past teachers in the far corner of our
cemetery. They sent us such old teachers, the homeless, the tottering, who were trying to piece out the
end of their lives with a year here and a year there in jobs no one else wanted because there's no
adequate pension system in the state and most teachers seem to die in harness. And their oldness and
their tottering were not sufficient in the Canyon where there are apt to be shocks for
Outsiders-unintentional as most of them are.
We haven't done so badly the last few years, though. The Old Ones say we're getting adjusted, though
some of the nonconformists say that the Crossing thinned our blood. It might be either or both or the
teachers are just getting tougher. The last two managed to last until just before the year ended. Father
took them in as far as Kerry Canyon and ambulances took them on in. But they were all right after a
while in the sanatorium and they're doing okay now. Before them, though, we usually had four teachers a
year.
Anyway Father wrote to a teachers' agency on the coast, and after several letters each way he finally
found a teacher.
He told us about it at the supper table.