"R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 02 - Tales of Midnight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

made me, Duffey. And don't turn it into a dirty joke."
"I made you by a talisman given to your father in a chance encounter
several years before your birth."
"Oh that thing! I have been going to throw it away several times,
but it was such a curious piece of anti-art. I'm told that I held onto it
from my birth till I was six months old and would not be separated from it
at all. I found that it's made of solid gold. It's fairly valuable or that,
but not as a piece of anti-art. Yes, it's real gold."
"Should I use false gold? Don't throw it away, Casey. Your soul may
be in it."
"If my soul was in it once, it wasn't there now, I've recently
traded souls with another person. Did you make anyone else that I know."
"Yes. One other certainly. Two others likely. And I've a feeling
that there are many acquaintances among members of the group that I don't
know about at all. Ah, I don't know just where you're going, Casey, but you
may meet all the others this week. I have the feeling that you creatures
have somehow decided to hold a conclave independently of your maker, me. But
how can you know where to find each other?"
"I don't know, Duffey. I sure don't know where to find any others of
your making, though I bet I'd recognize them as yours."
 "Yes, you will probably all recognize each other at sight. And I
believe that I will always know my own creatures when I come on them."
They drifted apart and fell into conversations with different sets
of people in the coach and did not talk to each other again during the trip.
They arrived in St. Louis in the early evening. Duffey and Casey and Mary
Catherine Carruthers all seemed to be leaving the train there.
"Whatever are they going to be doing in St. Louis?" Duffey muttered
about the other two. "And whatever am I going to be doing here myself?"
A young lady at a news stand in the train station was singing some
gibberish as she opened bundles of evening papers.

"Kerowl, kerowl! the dogs do growl.
The Duffeys have come to town!"

"Did you say Duffeys, young lady?" Melchisedech Duffey asked her.
"Yah, Duffeys. There's a bunch of them in town. You should see them,
you will see them. They're everywhere. They're wilder than beggars. They're
showier than Gypseys. Oh, they are something."
"Just exactly where in town are these 'Duffies' to be found?"
"Exactly everywhere," the young lady said. "They're everywhere."
It puzzled Duffey who these Duffeys might be. But if they were
everywhere in town, he would see them. Well, what was he doing here? Duffey
could always find excuses to come to St. Louis. He had business interests
there. He had two partners there, Bagby and Charley Murray. He had a sister
there. He still owned part of the famous Rounders' Club there. But he hadn't
come to St. Louis for any of these reasons. He had come because he had
received a letter in Chicago, postmarked Morgan City, Louisiana, and it had
read:
"...be in St. Louis on or about the last Saturday in May. I will see
you there then and give you your assignment for the rest of your life. Henri