"Kennedy, Leigh - Belling Martha" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kennedy Leigh)

"Were they mean to you?"

Martha looked at the sky. A bleak day altogether. The only vivid color was the pink weather-pinch in Switzer's cheeks. "I don't know Е naw. They just didn't pay much attention unless you got out of the line."

"Did you?" he asked, smiling conspiratorially.

"Sometimes."




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Martha had been standing in the short-season garden with three others when old Randall fell. He'd had attacks before, but they'd been mild and a few days of resting had usually put him back on his feet
This time he pitched face forward into the mud, scattering the basket of asparagus he'd gathered at the fence's edge. The four of them watched, and each of them knew the thoughts of the others without so much as an exchange of words or glances.

They waited.

Summer, Martha remembered, and the sky was cloudy without thunderheads, threatening only to blow over without rain. A mockingbird made a sound like a dry wooden wheel squeaking. Martha stood, not even waving away the gnats.

Old Randall made no move.

At first they walked calmly, then more rapidly toward the fallen man. The dry grass shushed under their bare feet as they ran.

No one ever found the bones of old Randall. God moved Brother Guy to leave twenty children without food (only two of whom had the memory of fat sizzling on the fire and a full stomach) just in case they'd forgotten that they lived in His mercy.




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They swung their pigeons in tandem as they wandered the city. Switzer talked about things that she couldn't really understand. Like trying to imagine the shape of the city if she'd only seen the ruins they'd passed through, she couldn't follow his words.
"We're driven to excesses," he said. "If we have food, we eat it until it's gone. If there's more than we can eat at once, we eat until we're sick, and go back for the rest before we're hungry. If we have enough fuel, we burn it until we're hot, even if the next day we have to be cold again. People are stupid and greedy when they're hungry and cold. If the government hadn't deserted us, they would try to fix things. But everyone with money and power moved to the equator. We've been deserted. After the Tropical War, they took all the people who could help away from the situation, and now they've forgotten."

"What about the governor?" Martha asked, trying to take part.

"Oh, he's greedy, too," Switzer said with disgust.

As they crawled through empty structures, overturned heaps of trash, opened cans and boxes and wrecked cars, he talked about scientific farming in cold weather, building places to live in space, and the lack of research in fission, solar power, and other energy sources.

"They were working on all those things before the weather changed. But it was all so halfhearted because they never really believed we would need it. By the time we did, everything was too ruined to make any constructive moves. My parents owned a company that designed solar homes."

Martha wondered if his parents lived at the house, and what "solar homes" were, but didn't ask.

He was quiet as they headed back. The kind of quiet that sounded like he was trying to think of something to say. Finally, he asked, "Can I sleep with you tonight?"

"I guess so," Martha said. "But Е"