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

cried out. She was the most gentle of the 'Duffeys' and she came to
Melchisedech Duffey in a geat sweep. The colors of these creatures! In what
store could you find pigments for such colors?
"Oh, you came to us like a ghost, and we hardly knew you," this
gentle one said, but the chandehers quivered a bit from the sound of her
gentle voice. "It's as though you were hidden in a cloud or in a burning
tree," she said. "And then you must remember that most of us have never seen
you before, and we have never heard your voice.
"Oh, bring bread and wine, people! This was the Duffey himself, the
Melchisedech. Ah, but we do love you with your nose in a sling. That shall
be one of your attributes when you are sung in epics! We wouldn't have you
any other way. We were wondering what you could do special for your
apparition."
Duffey had to rub his eyes with his fists. It was as it had been
when he was the Boy King back in his first childhood and he had made some
sun-squirrels. He had not been able to look at them. He had to look away and
rub his eyes. "But you made them," one of the seneschals had chided him,
"why can you not look at them?" "I didn't know they would be so bright when
the light went on inside them" young King Melchisedech had said. And these
his present animations, Duffey sure hadn't realized that they would be this
bright when the light was turned on inside them.
This first of them who had seen him here, this most gentle of the
ultra-people, was named Mary Virginia Schaeffer, and she was from Galveston.
Duffey knew her by this identity, just as she knew him as Duffey.
Some of the others came to meet him. They were overpowering, but
there was something lacking out of the middle of them. Duffey exulted in the
company of these finest of all creatures for a half hour or so, and then he
came back to his objection.
"My central creation was not here," Duffey said accusingly.
"Oh, Finnegan, he'll be here tomorrow," a big-brained, grinning,
young man of this special people swore. "No, Finnegan wasn't here yet
tonight. He was the salt of our lives, and we are saltless without him. But
not quite saltless, Duffey, when you are here."
But there was some oddity in what they knew Duffey by. They knew him
as the editor, now the former editor, of the Crock. It had been a cult sheet
with them. They had reveled in the intelligence of it, in the humor of it,
in the Duffiness of it. But they had only whispy and intuitive knowledge of
Melchisedech in his royal aspect.

The special people who were there, dining and roistering at
Rounders', were John Schultz (who was Hans) (who was the big-brained
grinning young man), and Marie Monaghan who was his wife from Australia.
And Dorothy Yekouris from New Orleans, and Henry Salvatore from
Morgan City Louisiana (Oh, oh, he will give you your rest-of-your-life
scenario, Duffey), and Mary Virginia Schaeffer from Galveston. And Absalom
Stein from Chicago (Duffey already knew him a little bit, but he had never
realized what a magnificent person he was, and he had never been absolutely
sure that he was one of his creations). Six of the high twelve were here
present. And Duffey had traveled from Chicago on the train with two others
of them that day, but from long acquaintanceship with them he did not always