"Frank Herbert - Soul Catcher" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

'Dad's going to Washington and so am I.'
She smiled. 'Different Washingtons.' 'Both named for the same man.'
'Indeed they were.'
Mrs Parma glided into the breakfast room, said: 'Excuse me, madam. I have had Peter
put the young sir's equipage into the car. Will there be anything else?'
'Thank you, Mrs Parma. That will be all.'
David waited until Mrs Parma had gone, said: 'That book about the camp said they have
some Indian counselors. Will they look like Mrs Parma?'
'Davey! Don't they teach you anything in that school?'
'I know they're different Indians. I just wondered if they, you know, looked like her, if
that's why we called our Indians ... '
'What a strange idea.' She shook her head, arose. 'There are times when you remind me
of your grandfather Morgenstern. He used to insist the Indians were the lost tribe of Israel.'
She hesitated, one hand lingering on the table, her gaze focused on the knife at David's
waist. 'You will be careful with that awful knife?'
'I'll do just like Dad said. Don't worry.'


***


Special Agent Norman Hosbig, Seattle Office, FBI:
Yes, in answer to that, I believe I can say that we do have some indications that the
Indian may be mentally deranged. Let me emphasize that this is only a possibility which we
are not excluding in our assessment of the problem. There's the equal possibility that he's
pretending insanity.
Hands clasped behind his head, Katsuk had stretched out in the darkness of his bunk in
Cedar Cabin. Water dripped in the washbasin of the toilet across the hall. The sound filled
him with a sense of rhythmic drifting. He closed his" eyes tightly and saw a purple glow
behind his eyelids. It was the spirit flame, the sign of his determination. This room, the
cabin with its sleeping boys, the camp all around -- everything went out from the center,
which was the spirit flame of Katsuk.
He drew in the shallow breaths of expectation, thought of his charges asleep in the long
barracks room down the hall outside his closed door: eight sleeping boys. Only one of the
boys concerned Katsuk. The spirits had sent him another sign: the perfect victim, the
Innocent.
The son of an important man slept out there, a person to command the widest attention.
No one would escape Katsuk's message.
To prepare for this time, he had clothed himself in a loincloth woven of white dog hair and
mountain goat wool. A belt of red cedar bark bound the waist. The belt held a soft deerhide
pouch which contained the few things he needed: a sacred twig and bone bound with cedar
string, an ancient stone arrowhead from the beach at Ozette, raven feathers to fletch a
consecrated arrow, a bowstring of twisted walrus gut, elkhide thongs to bind the victim, a
leaf packet of spruce gum ... down from sea ducks ... a flute ...
A great aunt had made the fabric of his loincloth many years ago, squatting at a flat loom
in the smoky shadows of her house at the river mouth. The pouch and the bit of down had
been blessed by a shaman of his people before the coming of the whites.
Elkhide moccasins covered his feet. They were decorated with beads and porcupine quills.
Janiktaht had made them for him two summers ago.
A lifetime past.