"Chad Oliver - Shadows in the Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oliver Chad)

take nothing for granted, and study them as objectively as you would a primitive tribe. There is no
man on this planet who can predict what you may find.
Well, he had found plenty, if he could only put it all together and make some kind of sense out of it. He
had found more than the author of those lines had ever dreamed of.
He started the motor, cut in the lights, and began to drive aimlessly through the dark streets. He made
the long square of Main Street first, not sure what he was looking for, not even sure he wanted to find it
He drove down past the drugstore, which was open but deserted, past the bank and the dry-goods store
and the jewelry shop and the Rialto. The Rialto was bright with lights, and he caught a fragment of tinny
music and deep, mechanical voices as he drove by. There was a girl sitting in the glass ticket booth, doing
her nails.
He turned left, bouncing across the railroad tracks, and then left again down the other side of Main
Street. It was much the same, with minor variations: another drug store, this one closed, a Humble gas
station, an "American Club" that was actually a combination pool hall and domino parlor, the Hot Chili Cafe,
a grocery store, a few houses, and the Catholic Church. He turned left again at the big, square icehouse,
jounced across the tracks, and looked over into the Mexican section of town. There was a little more life
there a few scattered lights, a woman laughing somewhere, the faint strumming of a guitar.
Paul Ellery pulled up along the curb, put the Ford in neutral, and left the motor running. He refilled his
pipe and lit it. He didn't want to go back to his hotel room at the Rocking-T. He just couldn't face another
long night of sitting alone and wrestling with the senseless data he had got in Jefferson Springs.
He constructed a newspaper headline for his own amusement: YOUNG SCIENTIST BAFFLES
LEARNED SOCIETIES; MIXES FACTS IN LABORATORY AND GETS NOTHING.
He noticed that his hands were sweating, and it wasn't that hot now. He tried to analyze his fear. Partly,
it was the result of two months of overt and covert hostility from Jefferson Springs. Partly, it was the result
of working on a research grant and not coming up with the right dope. Partly, it was the pattern that always
just eluded him the pattern that would make sense of his charts and files and statistics.
Mostly, it was a feeling. He had lived in Texas all his life, except for a stretch in the army and two years
at the University of Chicago. He knew his state pretty well. It was a diverse state, despite all the
stereotypes. The coastal city of Galveston was utterly unlike the capital city of Austin, just as booming
Houston was quite different from Abilene or Amarillo or Fort Worth or Laredo. Nevertheless, happily or
otherwise, a man knew when he was in Texas.
Jefferson Springs didn't belong. It wasn't quite Texas. It wasn't even quite America. In fact, it wasn't
quite
What was he thinking of?
"Cut that out, boy," he said to himself. "You're headed for the funny factory."
He made up his mind. He wasn't going back to the hotel, not yet. Somewhere, there had to be the clue
he needed. Somewhere, there had to be an answer. Somewhere but where?
There was one possibility.
He cut the car into gear and drove back along Main Street, and on out of town. He drove south, along
the highway that led eventually to Eagle Pass and Mexico, toward the Nueces River. The land was flat but
rolling, and his headlights picked out the dark twistings of mesquite trees and brush. The night was almost
cool now, and the breeze slanting in from the window vents was fresh and crisp. The Ford hummed along
the empty highway. Ahead of him, the lights stabbed a path through the early darkness. Behind him, the
night shadows flowed in again and filled up the hole.
Paul Ellery knew, with complete certainty, that there was something terribly wrong with the town of
Jefferson Springs. He meant to find out what it was.

II

Five miles outside of town, he turned off the highway to the left. The car purred along, still on a paved
road, with plowed fields on either side. The stars were coming out above him.