"Lafferty, R A - Among the Hairy Earthmen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

was Vulcan) played with his sick toys. He played at Ateliers
and Smithies, at Furnaces and Carousels. And often the other
Children came and watched his work, and joined in for a
while.
They played with the glass from the furnaces. They made
goldtoned goblets, iridescent glass poems, figured spheres,
goblin pitchers, glass music boxes, gargoyle heads, dragon
chargers, princess salieras, figurines of lovers. So many things
to make of glass! To make, and to smash when made!
But some of the things they exchanged as' gifts instead of
smashing themglass birds and horses, fortune-telling globes
that showed changing people and scenes within, tuned chim-
ing balls that rang like bells, glass cats that sparkled when
stroked, wolves and bears, witches that flew.
The Eretzi found some of these things that the Children
discarded. They studied them and imitated them.
And again, in the interludes of their other games, the
Children came back to Hobble's shops where he sometimes
worked with looms. They made costumes of wool and linen
and silk. They made trains and cloaks and mantles, all the
things for their grand masquerades. They fabricated tapestries
and rugs and wove in all sorts of scenes: vistas of Home and
of Eretz, people and peacocks, fish and cranes, dingles and
dromedaries, larks and lovers. They set their creations in the
strange ragged scenery of Eretz and in the rich contrived
gardens of Home. A spark went from the Children to their
weaving so that none could tell wherq they left off and their
creations began.
Then they left poor Hobble and went on to their more vital
games.
There were seven of them (six, not counting the backward
Hobble), but they seemed a thousand. They built themselves
Castles in Spain and Gardes in Languedoc. The girls played
always at Intrigue, for the high pleasure of it, and to give a
causus for the wars. And the wars were the things that the
boys seldom tired of. It is fun to play at armies with live
warriors; and the Eretzi were live . . . in a sense.
The Eretzi had had wars and armies and sieges long before
this, but they had been aimless things. Oh, this was one field
where the Eretzi needed the Children Consider the battles
that the Children engineered that afternoon'
Oallipolihow they managed the ships in that one! The
Fathers could not have maneuvered more intricately in their
four-dimension chess at Home.
Adrianople, Kunovitza, Dibra, Varna, Hexamilion! It's fun
just to call out the bloody names of battles.
Constantinople! That was the one where they first used the
big cannon. But who cast the big cannon for the Turks there?
In Orban or Urban, and that he was Dacian, or he was Hungar-

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