"C M Kornbluth - The Altar At Midnight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

"What's that mean?"



"Oh. Well, it's hard to describe. When you're outside and you lose your point, it means you're all mixed
up, you don't know which way the canтАФthat's the shipтАФwhich way the can is. It's having all that room
around you. But if you have a good balance, you feel a little tugging to the ship, or maybe you just know
which way the ship is without feeling it. Then you have your point and you can get the work done."



"There must be a lot that's hard to describe."
He thought that might be a crack and he dammed up on me.



"You call this Gandytown," I said after a while. "It's where the stove-up old railroad men hang out. This
is the place."



It was the second week of the month, before everybody's pension check was all gone. Oswiak's was
jumping. The Grandsons of the Pioneers were on the juke singing the Man from Mars Yodel and old
Paddy Shea was jigging in the middle of the floor. He had a full seidel of beer in his right hand and his
empty left sleeve was flapping.



The kid balked at the screen door. "Too damn bright," he said.



I shrugged and went on in and he followed. We sat down at a table. At Oswiak's you can drink at the
bar if you want to, but none of the regulars do.



Paddy jigged over and said: "Welcome home, Doc." He's a Liverpool Irishman; they talk like Scots,
some say, but they sound likeBrooklynto me.



"Hello, Paddy. I brought somebody uglier than you. Now what do you say?"



Paddy jigged around the kid in a half-circle with his sleeve flapping and then flopped into a chair when
the record stopped. He took a big drink from the seidel and said: "Can he do this?" Paddy stretched his
face into an awful grin that showed his teeth. He has three of them. The kid laughed and asked me: "What
the hell did you drag me into here for?"