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

be found for it this second time. Ah well, we lost the first race, and the
most populous one-third of our nation; but we lost it hard. We had them near
beaten for a little while tehre. Another year, and DOW-MEC-TEC will have
their first module ready. It will probably be far too late, it will likely
do no good at all, but you never know. The slimmest hope remains...
But now they were looking very hard for that answer the first time:
the three colonels, the High Commision of the colonels, the potential
saviors of their country and the world. It was not for person glory they
sought this (except Dinneen a little) but for the ultimate good of the
ultimate number.
Colonel Dinneen strode up and down endless corridors, booming like a
canary in his odd voice. He didn't want the thing in two years, he wanted it
in two minutes, right now.
Colonel Ludenshclager shuffled old brain-buster notes looking for a
miracle. He had an impediment there; he didn't believe in miracles.
Colonel Schachmeister walked desolately through the city, praying
for the instant miniaturized control station. He walked and walked; but
where did he walk?
"It is my unconscious leading me somewhere," he mumbled. "And I will
floow my unconscious wherever it leads, like a man in a dream."
That Schachmeister was an unconscious phony. It wasn't his
unconscious leading him anywhere! It was his conniving own self walking
furtively where his own dishonesty would not allow him to walk openly. And
he had that address graven on his brain by a micro-stylus.
There was something about a three-foot-wide Hippodrome from his
boyhood; there was something of the credence in the incredible; and both
these things were shameful to him as a man of science, and a colonel
moreover.
Well, it was a shabby enough neighborhood. The alley was worse, and
yet even this was not the final alley. He found it then, the "small alley",
hardly a skunk track. He followed it. He knocked crunchingly on a door and
near lost his hand in the termite-eaten wood.
"Be careful there!" an ancient voice blatted out like slats falling
down in an old bed. "Those are friends of my own people, and my people will
not have them discommoded. After all, they are quiet, they do no harm, and
they eat only wood."
"It -- it's the same McGruder! It is Malcomb 'the Marvelous'
McGruder himself, the Grand Master of McGruder's Marvels!" Colonel
Schachmeister detonated in wonder.
"Oh sure, little boy," came the wonderful foice like an old organ
filling with noise again and blowing the dust off itself in doing so. "And
it's the same little Heinie Schachmeister! Why aren't you in school today,
Heinie? Oh, I notice that you have grown, and perhaps yhou are too old for
school now."
"It's marvelous to see you again, Marvelous!" Schachmeister breathed
in awe. "I had no idea that you wree the same one, or that you were still
alive."
"Come in, little Heinie. And what are you doing? I have never seen
your name in the Flea-Bag, so I suppose you have failed in your early
ambition."