"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

"I'm dying, do not taunt me. What went wrong?"
"It went wrong a hundred years before you were born, John. You lived
all your life in a dream, and you had better try to re-enter it. You're here
for good. You're the ultimate patsy, John."
"I'll kill myself."
"No, you will not. You were allowed to this job because by
temperament and religion, the residue of your dream, you were incapable of
suicide. So many of our mayors have taken that easy way out! It was a
nuisance, John."
"I'll go crazy then," John the mayor moaned.
"No, you likely will not do that either, though it would not matter
if you did. You are already psychotic, of course, but you will not go off
much further. Stay and suffer, kid. You have no choice."
"Kreger, isn't there some way we can get shet of this whole island?
Sell it, transfer title to it, give it back to someone? Can't we get out
from under?"
"You find a way, John. Those things that we once thought of as
abstractions have taken a direct hand now, Final Responsibility, Ultimate
Justice, things like that. They must be satisfied. Whatever you do will have
to satisfy the psychic-coded lock on your shackles to give you release. Sell
the island legal, if you can find someone to sell it to. Transfer it, if you
can find someone to accept the transfer. But it must be for Fair Value or
Value Justified or Original Value from Original Entailment. The psychic-code
thing will know. It's governed by the Equity Factor."
Then Commissioner Kreger left John the mayor, left the island, and
went to rich fishing in other troubled (but not completely polluted) waters.
There was no more profit for that smart man to shake out of the island.
That had been two years ago, and John the mayor had been the only
official on the island since that time, His only contacts with the world
were the sharp noises and smells that came in through his broken windows,
and the visits of five feudal or wrangle leaders, the Duke, the Sky, the
Wideman, the Cloud, and the Lob.
Duke Durango was as smooth a gutter-fighter as ever came to the top
of his heap, a happy fellow. Lawrence Sky was a fair white man named for the
color of his big icy-blue eyes, a shambling giant, a giggling killer.
Wideman Wyle was a wide man indeed, a cheerful sadist who told really funny
stories and was the most pleasant person in the group. Cloud Clinkenbeard
was a dour and stormy fellow, mean and relentless, and always in search of
dirty novelty. Lolo Loudermilk was a girl, sort of a girl, a flaming mixed
creature full of vitality and noise.
They were the mayor's only contacts. They were the leaders of one of
the gangs that had endured, when the ten thousand gangs had eaten each other
up and declined to a hundred.
All five of them came into the mayor's office, eating noisily.
"Food train in!" announced the Duke. "We killed just one of the
drivers. They say there'll never be another train in if we kill more than
one driver at a time. And we had to give up four hostages for it. Isn't four
too many, John?"
"Numbers have no meaning in this evil thing," said John the mayor.
How many hostages have you left?"