"Frank Herbert - The Featherbedders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

'Town's pretty quiet,' Smeg said.
'Yep.'
Purely human accents, Smeg decided. He permitted himself to relax somewhat, asked:
'Anything unusual ever happen around here?'
'You fum the gov'ment?'
'That's right.' Smeg tapped the motor-pool insignia on his door. 'Department of Agriculture.'
'Then you ain't part of the gov'ment conspiracy?'
'Conspiracy?' Smeg studied the man for a clue to hidden meanings. Was this one of those
southern towns where anything from the government just had to be communist?
'Guess you ain't,' the man said.
'Of course not.'
'That there was a serious question you asked, then ... about unusual thing happening?'
'I ... yes.'
'Depends on what you call unusual.'
'What ... do you call unusual?' Smeg ventured.
'Can't rightly say. And you?'
Smeg frowned, leaned out his window, looked up and down the street, studied each detail:
the dog sniffing under the porch of a building labeled 'General Store,' the watchful blankness
of windows with here and there a twitching curtain to betray someone peering out, the
missing boards on the side of a gas station beyond the store - one rusty pump there with its
glass chamber empty. Every aspect of the town spoke of heat-addled somnolence ... yet it
was wrong. Smeg could feel tensions, transient emotional eddies that irritated his highly tuned
senses. He hoped Rick already had a hiding place and was listening.
'This is Wadeville, isn't it?' Smeg asked.
'Yep. Used to be county seat 'fore the war.'
He meant the War Between The States, Smeg realized, recalling his studies of regional
history. As always, the Slorin were using every spare moment to absorb history, mythology,
arts, literature, science - You never knew which might be the valuable piece of information.
'Ever hear about someone could get right into your mind?' the man asked.
Smeg overcame a shock reaction, groped for the proper response. Amused disbelief, he
decided, and managed a small chuckle. 'That the unusual thing you have around here?'
'Didn't say yes; didn't say no.'
'Why'd you ask then?' Smeg knew his voice sounded like crinkling bread wrapper. He pulled
his head back into the car's shadows.
'I jes' wondered if you might be hunting fer a teleepath?'
The man turned, hawked a cud of tobacco toward the dirt at his left. A vagrant breeze
caught the spittle, draped it across the side of Smeg's car.
'Oh, dang!' the man said. He produced a dirty yellow bandanna, knelt and scrubbed with it
at the side of the car.


Smeg leaned out, studied this performance with an air of puzzlement. The man's responses,
the vague hints at mental powers -they were confusing, fitted no pattern in Slorin experience.
'You got somebody around here claiming to be a telepath?' Smeg asked.
 'Can't say.' The man stood up, peered in at Smeg. 'Sorry about that there. Wind, you
know. Accident. Didn't mean no harm.'
'Certainly.'
'Hope you won't say nothing to the sheriff. Got 'er all cleaned off your car now. Can't tell
where I hit 'er.'
The man's voice carried a definite tone of fear, Smeg realized. He stared at this American