"Judith Merril - Pioneer Stock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

 When they got to the inside, he understood right away, even before he saw her. The house of a man
who lived alone, though ever so clean, could have had no such look of ease and comfort as this one
boasted.
Thatcher's head was in a whirl for a while. George brought him a drink that was remarkably like real
rift beer, and sat down with him in the big living room. He cleared his throat started to talk, and cleared
his throat again. And all the while Phil was thinking about the stockade, which must have been built for
reasons more urgent and immediate than to protect Leseur's family in the uncertain future.
"I think I had better..." George cleared his throat again. He couldn't seem to get it out.
"No need to tell me," Thatcher said slowly. "It's all around me. It was a foolhardy thing to do,
Leseur."
George didn't take offense. He nodded bitterly in agreement, and by way of explaining did no more
than go into the next room and return with the girl, Leahtillette.
It was almost enough. By human standards, all the Dzairdee had a sort of faerie beauty. But this girl
had more than most. And in a week of staying in the house, Phil Thatcher found it was not just good
looks and a sweet way she had. She kept the house and served the meals, and waited on George with a
kind of worshipful willingness such as no man could have long resisted.
Then one evening when she had gone to her room and the two men sat talking late, George put the
question straight.
"I don't suppose you'll be wanting to stay now that you know?"
"It's hard to say," Phil told him. "Isn't your wife coming?"
"She is," Leseur' admitted, and said no more simply because there was nothing to say.
"What will you do, man?"
"Until you came, I drove myself crazy with the question. Then, I thought perhaps...Thatcher, she can't
go back to her own people. She just can't. SheтАФOh, I don't know what I'll do!" he cried out, seeing an
answer in Thatcher's face that made words needless between them.
They went to their beds that night without further talk. During the night Phil Thatcher thought he
heardтАФand he was almost sure he had heard it beforeтАФa low crying from somewhere in the house. The
next morning he found George out in a shed in the back yard, building a new plow, and put it to him
without evasion.
"It's not for her people I'm afraid. And it's not for any fault in the girl, as I see her. Any man would be
lucky to get an Earth-girl to be such a wife to him. But she's yours, you see. When your wife comes a
stranger, an outsider would onlyтАФ" He left the sentence uncompleted.
George Leseur could only hang his head, for there was no answer he could make to justify himself
even in his own eyes.
"As to building here," Phil went on, "you're my friend, George, and I'm no man to run when there may
be a fight. But if her people come to take her back I'd say, let her go. You surely must know you can't
keep her. I'd like to build my house beside your own, if you still want me here. But you'll have to make
up your mind about the girl, and your own woman. I could live with any kind of hell, I think, except that
one."
Later the same day, George came to him, and said simply: "If you still want to build, will you start
now, and take my word I'll think of something to do about Leahtillette before my wife gets here."
So it was settled, and the two of them began on the foundation of the second house the next morning.
But it was almost another month before Thatcher found out the reason why Leahtillette, whom they both
called Leah, could not go back to her own people, and what the crying was he had heard in the night.
It happened on one day when she was less quick than usual, and he came across them both in the
small side yard where she washed, and hung out her clothes, and where the men seldom wentтАФLeah,
and a fat, round, gold-skinned baby.
The first thought that entered his head he rejected as impossible. The next explained just as well why
she couldn't go back. When she saw he'd discovered them, she gave a small, frightened cry, and then her
features relaxed in a smile of relief: It must have been pure torment, he thought, trying to hide it all the