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

Justified. My own shackling is governed by the Equity Factor."
"We know that, Mr. Mayor," said Freddy Flatfish, the lawyer for the
Midlands Gun and Rod Club. Freddy Flatfish was a tow-headed, twinkling man.
"But the island has reverted. It's really worthless since it was left to the
ten thousand gangs, which have since devoured themselves down to a hundred.
Perhaps its reverted value is now its original value. Anyhow, the first
approach was yours."
"Mine? Mine? I made no approach. I never heard of you fellows," the
Mayor said.
"But we have monitored you, Mayor John. Two years ago you said to
the commissioner 'Can't we give it back to someone?' And you are also
recorded as saying 'We ought to sell it back to --'"
"Second installment!" announced Adrian Sweetsong. "Set them right
there, boys."
Several of the colts set down the long crates, and Dennis Halftown
broken them open with his pry-bar.
"Oh, those long sweet songs!" the Wideman slavered. "Smooth bores!
You can jam them with any kind of soup at all and pan-light them. You can
shoot broken glass with them. You can shoot anything. Here, we'll just hand
a few of them out the windows and let the fellows try them out. Get the heft
of those things! Even as clubs your hands would fall in love with them!
Blunderbusses!" And the Wideman handed half a dozen of them out the windows.
"Twenty guns," announced Adrian Sweetsong. "Delivered and accepted.
We record them."
"Even if it were possible for me to deal the island for things of no
value," John the mayor began -- and there was deep-throated roaring and
death-screaming in the streets --
"No value, Mayor?" the Duke Durango asked with deep irony. "Mayor,
you should be able to watch them. They jam them with soup, and then ram in
glass and nails for a load. They spark them off, and it's wonderful. Cuts
people right in two. Don't talk no value about those things!"
"Even if it were possible for me to deal the island for such things,
what could the Midlands Gun and Rod Club possibly do with the island?" Mayor
John asked.
"Set up a hunting preserve," Adrian Sweetsong said. "It's a nicely stocked
jungle island seventeen miles by four. We'll hunt. We'll hunt."
"Hunt? What would you hunt?" the mayor wanted to know.
"Big game, big game," said Dennis Halftown lovingly.
"But there is no big game, no game at all on the island," the mayor
insisted.
"Remember what ancient Hemingway wrote," said Freddy Flatfish.
"'There is no sport equal to the hunting of an armed man.' Ah, we'll hunt
them here, as will many of our well-heeled members."
"Third installment! Set it right there, boys," Adrian Sweetsong
ordered.
The ragged island boys set down the bag, and Dennis Halftown broke
it open with his pry-bar.
"Boys, boys, that's the smell like was born in me!" the Sky
chortled, and he had his arms up to the elbows in the dark grainy powder.
"Sure it hasn't the power of soup. Sure it's clumsy and crude. But it's the