"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

blood through my veins. And the denomination cannot be diminished further.
There is no smaller coin than the copper penney.
"It didn't go all that bright and shining with Mattlicw Quoin in the
penney years, though. The rheumatism had bitten deeper into his hands and
fingers, and now his lightning fingers were slow lightning indeed. The "time
is money" saying applied to Matthew more explicitly than it had ever applied
to anyone else, and there were quite a few slownesses conspiring to eat up his
valuable time.
And every time that prices went up, by the same degree was he driven
down. After five years in the peniiy eon he was driven down plenty.
"If it takes me five hours just to draw out and count the money for my
week's rent, then things are coming to an intolerable stage with me," he said.
"Something is going to have to give." Something gave.
The government decreed that, due to the general inflation of the economy
and the near-worthlessness of the one-cent piece, or penny, that coin would no
longer be minted. And, after a cutoff date in the near future, it would no
longer be legal tender either.
"What will I do now?" Matthew Quoin asked himself.
He went to talk to the people at the Elite Metal Salvage Company,
Scavenger Department.
"How much a pound will you give me for copper pennies?" he asked.
"Two cents a pound," the man said. "There hasn't been very much copper
in copper pennies for years and years."
"There is in these," Matthew said. "They follow the specifications of
the earliest minting." He showed several of them to the man.
"Amazing, amazing!" the man said. "They're almost pure copper. Five
cents a pound."
"I don't know if I can live on that or not," Matthew Quoin said, "but
I've no choice except to try."
Matthew Quoin changed his life style a bit. He gave up his lodging room.
He slept in a seldom-flooded storm sewer instead. But it was still a hard go.
A nickel a pound! Do you know how many pennies, pulled out rheumatically
one by one, it takes to make a pound? Do you know how many nickels it takes
now just to get a cup of coffee and an apple fritter for breakfast? Matthew
Quoin had started at three-thirty that morning. It would be ten o'clock before
he had enough to take to the Elite Metal Salvage Company to sell for legal
tender. It would be ten-thirty before he had his scanty breakfast. And then
back to the old penny-fishing again. His fingers were scabbed and bleeding. It
would be almost midnight before he had enough (yes, the Elite Metal Salvage
Comany did do business at night; that's when they did of lot of their
purchasing of stolen metal) to trade in for supper money. And that would
represent only one hamburger with everything on it, and one small glass of
spitzo. But Matthew would never be clear broke. He was still cock of the
walk.
"Now here is where it gets rough," Matthew Quoin said. "Suppose that I
give up and am not able to live on the bright flow of coins, and I die (for I
cannot die until I do give up); suppose that I die, then I will have lost the
dubious transaction that I made so long ago. I'll have been outsmarted on the
deal, and I cannot have that. That fellow bragged that he'd never lost on a
transaction of this sort, and he rubbed it in with a smirk. We'll just see