"Lois Lowry - The Giver" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lowry Lois)

The Giver
Lois Lowry




Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston

For all the children
To whom we entrust the future
 The Giver




1
It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought.
Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the
way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. He had seen
it both times. Squinting toward the sky, he had seen the sleek jet, almost a blur at its high speed, go past, and
a second later heard the blast of sound that followed. Then one more time, a moment later, from the
opposite direction, the same plane.
At first, he had been only fascinated. He had never seen aircraft so close, for it was against the rules for
Pilots to fly over the community. Occasionally, when supplies were de-livered by cargo planes to the
landing field across the river, the children rode their bicycles to the riverbank and watched, intrigued, the
unloading and then the takeoff di-rected to the west, always away from the community.
But the aircraft a year ago had been different. It was not a squat, fat-bellied cargo plane but a
needle-nosed single-pilot jet. Jonas, looking around anxiously, had seen others тАФ adults as well as children
тАФ stop what they were doing and wait, confused, for an explanation of the frightening event.




1
IMMEDIATELY,
Then all of the citizens had been ordered to go into the nearest building and stay there.
the rasping voice through the speakers had said. L E A V E Y O U R B I C Y
CLES W H E R E T H E Y A R E .
Instantly, obediently, Jonas had dropped his bike on its side on the path behind his familyтАЩs dwelling. He
had run indoors and stayed there, alone. His parents were both at work, and his little sister, Lily, was at the
Childcare Center where she spent her after-school hours.
Looking through the front window, he had seen no people: none of the busy afternoon crew of Street
Cleaners, Landscape Workers, and Food Delivery people who usually populated the community at that time
of day. He saw only the abandoned bikes here and there on their sides; an upturned wheel on one was still
revolving slowly.
He had been frightened then. The sense of his own community silent, waiting, had made his stomach
churn. He had trembled.
But it had been nothing. Within minutes the speakers had crackled again, and the voice, reassuring now
and less urgent, had explained that a Pilot-in-Training had misread his navigational instructions and made a