"Henry Kuttner - The Lion and the Unicorn UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

discards of civilization, huddled about the fire and cooked the bear they had killed with spear and arrow. The chorus burst out vigorously.
"Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee, Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes men free, So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea While we were marching through Georgia."
There was a gray scar of desolation where Atlanta had been. The bright, clean new towns dotted Georgia, and helicopters hummed to the sea and back again now. The great War between the States was a memory, shadowed by the greater conflicts that had followed. Yet in that still northern forest, vigorous voices woke the past again.
Line rubbed his shoulders against the rough, bark of the 'tree and yawned. He was chewing the bit of a battered pipe and grateful for the momentary solitude. But he could sense- feel-understand stray fragments of thoughts that came to him from around the campfire. He did not know they were thoughts, since, for all he knew, Hartwell and the others might feel exactly the same reactions. Yet, as always, the rapport made him faintly unhappy, and he was grateful for the-something-that told him Cassie was coming.
She walked softly out of the shadow and dropped beside him, a slim, pretty girl a year younger than his seventeen years. They had been married less than a year; Line was still amazed that Cassie could have loved him in spite of his bald, gleaming cranium. He ran his fingers through Cassie's glossy, black hair, delighting in the sensuous feel of it, and the way it ran rippling across his palm.
"Tired, hon?"
"Nope. You feeling bad, Line?"
"It's nothing," he said.
"You been acting funny ever since we raided that town," Cassie murmured, taking his brown hand and tracing a pattern with her forefinger across the calloused palm. "You figure that wasn't on the beam for us to do, maybe."
"I dunno, Cassie," he sighed, his arm circling her waist. "It's the third raid this year-"
"You ain't questioning Jesse James Hartwell?"
"S'pose I am?"
"Well, then," Cassie said demurely, "you better start con-
sidering a quick drift for the two of us. Jesse don't like no arguments."
"No more do I," Line said. "Maybe there won't be no more raids now we're southering."
"We got full bellies, anyhow, and that's more than we had across the Canada line. I never saw a winter like this, Line."
"It's been cold," he acknowledged. "We can make out. Only thing is-"
"What?"
"I kinda wish you'd been along on the raids. I can't talk to nobody else about it. I felt funny. There was voices inside my head, like."
"That's crazy. Or else conjure."
"I'm no hex man. You know that, Cassie."
"And you ain't been smoking crazy weed." She meant the marijuana that grew wild in the backlands. Her gaze sought his. "Tell me what it's like, Line. Bad?"
"It ain't bad and it ain't good. It's mixed up, that's all. It's sort of like a dream, only I'm awake. I see pictures."
"What pictures, Line?"
"I don't know," he said, looking into the darkness where the brook chuckled and splashed. "Because half the time it ain't me when that happens. I get hot and cold inside. Sometimes it's like a music in my head. But when we raided that town it was plain bad, Cassie hon." He seized a bit of wood and tossed it away. "I was like that chip tossed around in the water. Everything was pulling at me every which way."
Cassie kissed him gently. "Don't pay no mind to it. Everybody gets mixed up once in a while. Once we get more south, and the hunting's good, you'll forget your vapors."
"I can forget 'em now. You make me feel better, just being with you. I love the smell of your hair, sweet." Line pressed his face against the cool, cloudly darkness of the girl's braids.
"Well, I won't cut it, then."
"You better not. You got to have enough hair for both of us."
"You think that matters to me, Line? Boone Curzon's bald, and he's plenty handsome."
"Boone's old, near forty. That's why. He had hair when he was young."
Cassie pulled up some moss and patted it into shape on Line's head. She smiled at him half-mockingly. "How's that? Ain't nobody anywhere that's got green hair. Feel better now?"
He wiped his scalp clean, pulled Cassie closer and kissed her. "Wish I never had to leave you. I ain't troubled when you're around. Only these raids stir me up."
"Won't be no more of 'em, I guess."
Line looked into the dimness. His young face, seamed and bronzed by.his rugged life, was suddenly gloomy. Abruptly he stood up.
"I got a hunch Jesse James HartwelPs planning another."
"Hunch?" She watched him, troubled. "Maybe it ain't so."
"Maybe," Line said doubtfully. "Only my hunches work pretty good most times." He glanced toward the fire. His shoulders squared.
"Line?"
"He's figgering on it, Cassie. Sitting there thinking about the chow we got at that last town. It's his belly working on him. I ain't going to string along with him."
"You better not start nothing."
"I'm gonna ... talk to him," Line said almost inaudibly, and moved into the gloom of the trees. From the circle of firelight a man sent out a questioning challenge; the eerie hoot of an owl, mournful and sobbing. Line understood the inflection and answered with the caw of a raincrow. Hedgehounds had a language of their own that they used in dangerous territory, for there was no unity among the tribes, and some Hedgehounds were scalpers. There were a few cannibal groups, too, but these degenerates were hated and killed by the rest whenever opportunity offered.
Line walked into camp. He was a big, sturdy, muscular figure, his strong chest arched under the fringed buckskin shirt he wore, his baldness concealed now by a squirrelhide cap. Temporary shelters had been rigged up, lean-tos, thatched with leaves, gave a minimum of privacy, and several squaws were busily sewing. At the cookpot Bethsheba Hartwell was passing out bear steaks. Jesse James Hartwell, an oxlike giant with a hook nose and a scarred cheek that had whitened half of his beard, ate meat and biscuits with relish, washing them down with green turtle soup-part of the raid's loot. On an immaculate white cloth before him was spread caviar, sardines, snails, chow chow, antipasto, and other dainties that he sampled with a tiny silver fork that was lost in his big, hairy hand.
"C'mon and eat, skinhead," Hartwell rumbled. "Where's your squaw? She'll get mighty hungry."
"She's coming," Line said. He didn't know that Cassie was crouching in the underbrush, a bared throwing-knife in her hand. His thoughts were focused on the chief, and he could still sense what he had called his hunch, and which was actually undeveloped telepathy. Yes, Hartwell was thinking about another raid.
Line took a steak from Bethsheba. It didn't burn his calloused hands. He squatted near Hartwell and bit into the juicy, succulent meat. His eyes never left the bearded man's face.
"We're out of Canada now," he said at last. "It's wanning up some. We still heading south?"
Hartwell nodded. "You bet. I don't figure on losing another toe with frostbite. It's too cold even here."
"There'll be hunting, then. And the wild corn's due soon. We'll have a-plenty to eat."
"Pass the biscuits, Bethsheba. Urp. More we eat, Line, the fatter we'll get for next winter."