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

"Yes, there are odd things happening in town," sister Mary Louise
said. "The 'Duffeys' have come to town. The beggars aren't in it with the
'Duffeys'. I love you with your nose in a sling."
"What Duffeys have come to town?" Melchisedech asked her as he had
asked Beth. "Who are they?"
"If you don't know them, then nobody does," Mary Louise said. "There
has never been so fired-up a band of Gypseys as these Duffeys."
Abd Beth chimed in again. "Oh, there's no question about who they
are," she said. "They're you. They're you if you were multipled ten or
eleven times, if you were better looking and smarter than you really are, if
you were more colorful, if you were wittier, if yoy wer more magnetic. They
are you exactly, with ten thousand superior things added to each of them."
Beth's little girls had long since become big girls. Beth was a
grandmother now, but she was still a piece of cool, ivory statuary that
laughed. "I know, Melky, every time that I see one of them (and I've been
seeing them yesterday and today everywhere) that you thought him up, or her.
If I wanted to make people, how would I start, Duffey? I bet mine wouldn't
be as sprawling or overdone as yours are. We will see some of your creatures
tonight. Wherever we go, some of them will be there. What are they doing in
St. Louis? I also love you with your nose in that sling."
"I believe that the creatures are holding some sort of conclave in
this town this week," Duffey said, "but I didn't authorize it."
"You had better authorize it, Duffey," Erlenbaum, Beth's husband,
said with a mountainous grin. Erlenbaum sometimes kneaded huge fists and
grinned loweringly at Duffey, and Duffey pushed him a ways by taking
friendly liberties upon the lap and bosom of Beth while grinning back at
him. "If you can't whip them, Duffey, and you can't, then you'd better join
them. If they were yours once, they're not now. Any of them would take you
around on a leash like a little dog."

Duffey and the Bagbys and the Erlenbaums arrived at Rounders' Club.
Most times, when Duffey would come into Rounders', whether he had been gone
for an hour or for three years, a band or orchestra or combo would strike up
'The Mng Shall Ride'. For Duffey was still King at the Rounders' Club. But
now he was not noticed when he came in. There were other attractions there.
There was the picture of the 'Severed Giant Hands' up over the
doorway that led to the Elegant Riverboat Deck. These 'Severed Giant
Hands'were an old dream of Duffey's. Now it was the case that Duffey felt
his own hands to be severed and deprived of further creative functions when
he came into the presence of several of his own creations.
How had he ever done them? And how had they gone so far beyond
everything that he had any knowledge of? There were several of the
Duffeys-come-to-town present. They were brilliant, bedazzled, larger than
life, overwhelming, loud, grotesquely suer-intelligent, roughing, shouting,
pleasant, pleasant, pleasant. They had very light ways for their very great
masses. It was as if they had just come from other gravities and other
worlds. Duffey might as well be invisinle, for all that anybody would give
him a look when the more flamboyant 'Duffeys'were there.
Then the vane swung around and Duffey became visible once more.
"Oh, it was Duffey himself!" a female of the incredible species